Monday, August 6, 2018

Beat the Prague Heat!


How to Beat the Bejesus Out of This Bastard Prague Heat.


photo via Flickr by ataferner


If you happen to be in Prague right now, this heat wave might make you think about moving to the North Pole to bask in glacial darkness for 24 hours per day. Europeans don't have AC. Even when the last EuroHeatWave killed 14,000 people in France, they did not install AC in their quaint little maisonettes. Non. They just said c'est la vie and ate a snail. That same heat wave killed more than 70,000 across Europe.

So when the sun beats down and burns the tar up on the roof, and your shoes get so hot you wish your tired feet were fire proof, follow these Wide Body Jetsetter tips to keep your hot ass cool.

Heat Follows My Wide Ass Everywhere


Where I come from it gets hotter than a two-dollar pistol. Growing up in the Central Valley in California is like sitting in the waiting room just outside of Hell. And whenever one of those smarmy TV reporters did their weekly How to Beat the Heat report, I wanted to beat them like a red-headed stepchild. Easy for you to beat the heat in your air-conditioned studio, to which you drive to-and-from in your air-conditioned car to your air-conditioned house. All of my working poor life I had to drive 20-year-old cars with no AC to and from jobs with bosses so cheap they only turned on the AC in their offices and let the labor slowly suffocate in the heat. At home? If I happened to have working AC and turned it on for more than five minutes per day, it cost me $300 per month.

I have always hated the heat. Even when I was a skinny bastard. Imagine how I hate it now, with 100 pounds of blubber strapped onto my frame. When the sun bakes down on my skin, I feel like a walrus slowly turning on a spit. Goo goo g'joob. So these are the things I do to avoid heat stroke, heart attack, and heat rashes in my nethers:

Heat-Beater #1: Get a Job in a Modern Building


Prague is surrounded by a sea of gray concrete Soviet block housing and new tech offices in equal proportion. Get your ass a job in one of these tech companies. If you have an IT degree, you're gold. If you're a 'creative' soul (doomed) like me, you'll have to work in the mail room or strapped to a phone line listening to people call you a cocksucker because your company didn't send them their collectible train on time. But hey, these offices have AC, so it's better than sitting at home slowly sliding down your sweaty, faux-leather couch.

Heat-Beater #2: Tramspotting


They now have air-conditioned trams in Prague! Finally! Sure, there are only about 40 of them, but some wise soul at the Prague Transport grew tired of having to scrape dead old people off the tram seats every summer. So they bought a fleet of new trams with AC in them. You will know them by their orange racing stripes on their noses. However, you can lead a horse to water...

The Prague Transport web forum is filled with complaints from Czechs saying 'bullshit tram with bullshit people opening windows so the AC doesn't work. Total bullshit.' Yes, the word 'blbost' was translated on the fb forum as 'bullshit.' I've been lucky enough to have ridden the AC trams without windows opened by shitbirds. That AC REEEEAAAAALLLLLY works, man. It's like stepping out of a desert into a meat locker. I pity the vůl who tries to open the window on my watch.



Heat-Beater #3: Run Behind a Water Truck


The Prague roads get so hot that they get all gummy like caramel, so you will often see huge orange tanker trucks spewing water from all sides on the road around them. When the day is hotter than Georgia asphalt, run behind that water truck and cool your jets. Sure, that water plume may contain chemicals known to Putin to melt the faces off of journalists, but WTF are you gonna do when it's over 95 fucking degrees outside?

Heat-Beater #4: Like. Go to the Mall.


photo by Tiia Monto
I view the mall as a necessary evil, a temple to mass consumerism peddling mostly overpriced blbost to rehabilitated commies with too much cash and credit. I call them Czigga rich. Anywho, malls are not just for hormone-addled teens anymore. Grown-ass adults like me go there to slowly putter up and down the frozen food aisles in supermarkets til I get goosebumps. You can even buy cold beer on tap and just casually sip it for hours while watching all the spotty teens and their Czigga rich parents strolling by. If there's a cineplex in that mall (and there usually is), go watch the latest Hollywood blbost and snort up the AC like a Hollywood producer snorts the booger sugar.


Heat-Beater #5: Wake Up at the Crack of Dawn and Open All Your Windows


As much as I hate mornings, as much as I'd rather sleep til noon, my wide ass wakes up stuck to my sweaty sheets at dawn. And I have my number 2 fan on me all night. I stagger to my feet, bounce off my walls, throw hot coffee on my face to wake up, then open up all the windows in my flat. Can't leave them open all night, nosiree Bob. I live on the ground floor in the ghetto and gypos would crawl into my flat and steal my widescreen and my wife. Plus it stays hot all night until about 5 am.

Like a Monkey With a Machine Gun


Czechs have AC but they don't know how to use it. Most of the buildings in Prague were built before AC was invented, so central AC is out of the question. This means overpriced fans and overpriced portable AC units. Don't try to buy a desk fan in a Czech appliance store, the greedy bastards will charge you 50 bucks for a Chinese-made fan that costs 5 bucks to produce. And the portable AC units cost more than a used car. Go to building supply shops like Obi or Hornbach. I got a desk fan for only 300 crowns ($12). It's my number one fan.

Like anything new, it takes time for the monkey to figure out how to get that spark onto the stick pile. Such is the AC learning curve. Take a look around Prague. Anytime you see one of those portable AC units in a small shop, the stupid bastards have the front door wide open, with the AC vent hose just snaking outside. Big Sir's Final Tip: AC basics. Dear knedlikyheads, they've got instructions in Czech on that portable AC unit that cost more than your old Škoda. Here's how AC works: it sucks the hot air into the unit, passes it through a compressor, condenser, and evaporator to chill that air out. Then it spews cold air into the hot space. That big white hose on the beast is not the tail. It vents ugly, stale, hot air. So that needs to be connected to a vent in your window or wall. Anything else is just pissing into the wind. Maybe these are the same idiots who open the windows on the AC trams.

And with that, I'm turning on my number one fan and closing my windows. It's 10 am and already starting to get as hot as fuck. Stay cool, my ninjas.