...in the Summer, When It Sizzles

Now that it’s summer (or some approximation of it, given the inconsistent weather we’ve been having), I’ve realized there’s one thing I kind of miss: air conditioning. It’s taken me by surprise. After all, I don’t live in a sweltering, smog-infused metropolis near the equator, nor a steamy jungle—but I have to say that sometimes Paris can feel like either one. By general rule, there’s no A/C in many homes, office buildings, shops, restaurants, and certainly not on the Métro and RER, neither on the platform nor on the train cars themselves. Summer temperatures can be akin to those in the Northeast U.S., but even on days in the low 70's, navigating all of the above locations can turn me into a hot, wilted mess.

The Métro and RER can be fairly bearable on a hot day at off-peak hours. It’s not cool on the trains, by any stretch, but it doesn’t feel like you’ve entered a boiler room—unless you’re riding during rush hour. All that densely packed commuter flesh can really raise the temperature quite a bit. The RER Line A, which I use four days a week, is a friggin’ oven. I get on the train feeling just fine, but after being wedged on it like a sausage for only eight stationary minutes, I’m sweating.

Once I’m outside, even if it’s hot out, the fresh air and light breeze are welcome sources of relief. But that all ends when I reach a client’s office building. Those of you who live in hot places with abundant A/C know the near-orgasmic pleasure of walking into a frigid lobby after trekking around in the muggy outdoors. Here in Paris, the sensation of walking into an uncooled lobby is the exact opposite. The heat hits you like a ton of bricks. At larger, more modern buildings, like the 37-story tower where I have several clients, the situation improves once you go upstairs. There must be some light A/C in the halls because they just feel cooler, and each meeting room has heat and A/C controls. (Getting a French person to agree to turning on the A/C is another story. More on that below.)

However, if you suffer the misfortune of working in a smaller, older building (the norm in Paris), you are screwed. My company’s office building doesn’t have the infrastructure for A/C, reducing our top-story office to a veritable furnace. The hottest spot within is the teachers’ room, which houses the copying machine (in other words, the device we need to use the most), which emanates radioactive levels of heat.

It can be just as bad in the shops, too. On one particularly hot day, I was thirsty and on my way to a client, and couldn’t find a little grocery, so I stopped at a Monoprix (higher-price supermarket chain) to buy a cold drink. Walking inside was like suddenly being transported to Mumbai: over 90 degrees and air so humid you could slice it with a butter knife, which is never a good sign indoors. How can the fanciest supermarket in Paris not have A/C? At this rate, I’d have to buy two drinks—one just to hydrate me enough to make it out of the store.

Although many restos don’t have air-con, they very often have one magic ingredient: la terrasse. And if you aren’t lucky enough to snag a seat there, the doors and windows are always open, creating some soothing cross-ventilation inside. The same can be done at home, where we also have fans to get us through what could be too-warm, sleepless nights.

My aversion to the lack of A/C deems me a freak. The French are nearly always cold. I don’t know what in their genetic disposition makes them so sensitive to cold temperatures; Paris is on the same longitude as Vancouver, for crying out loud. C’est bizarre--and also, kind of hysterical. I’ll be on the boiling-hot RER during rush hour, perspiring in short sleeves and a skirt, and women will be sporting light sweaters while men will be keeping on the jackets of their wool-blended suits. I’ve entered relatively cool conference rooms at my students’ buildings, smiling in relief, only to have my dreams shattered by the eternal complaint, “Ah, il fait froid! Oh la la la la, la climatisation est la merde.” Then my student will invariably fiddle with the A/C control panel, gasping in horror at the temperature reading of 20 degrees (that’s roughly 72 F). I’ve had to talk students down from cranking it up to 26 C (approx. 84 F). Just the other night at a restaurant (which had a perfect room temperature), N and I noticed two parties ask to change their table “because of the draft.” Ha! Now you know why the French all wear scarves: to protect their delicate, draft-endangered necks.

I used to be like them, kind of. I always used to get cold back in the States. An SF summer was a time to bust out the fleece, not turn up the air-con. At a summer job in NYC I used to wear a sweater in the office because it was freezing due to full-blast A/C. Geography didn't even really have much to do with it--I always had temperature wars with students in my never-quite-right classroom and also at home with my husband, who would be perfectly happy if it never went above 73 degrees, anywhere. How things have changed. Well, it may be more energy efficient in France, but they could maybe spread the love...just a little bit? I mean, this is the country where thousands of senior citizens died in an unprecedented August heatstroke five years back (a big part of the problem, aside from lack of A/C, was that almost the entire country was on vacation).

When I visit NYC this summer, I know it’ll probably hot as Hades—but at least on the subway, there will be air-conditioning.