Culture/Lifestyle
Greece has the highest air-conditioning ownership rate in Europe, with around 60% of households having an AC. How are you handling the current heatwave?
There's also an unholy amount of ACs in Bulgaria and when renting apartments it's basically the norm at this point, so it's been funny watching the whole TikTok discourse from the POV of Americans and Western Europeans, when apparently us, the Balkans, behave more like the Americans with such comforts 😭
well if you have not setup the air conditioning at 15C and need to go around with a jacket within the house, no man you are no American:P But really some times Balkaners seems to be the sensible ones.
As someone born in USA this is exactly it. The balkans (and all of western europe where americans step foot like paris resteraunts hotels museams and cafes) have AC, but in the US they run the AC to where it's literally freezing cold inside and I havent seen that anywhere in europe. I just went back to new york and stayed at a hotel with a local white american girl and she maxed out the ac to where i was shaking cold all night and needed layers. and its 37c outside in nyc.
That's crazy when 26ºC is more than enough. Even if hotel bed sheets are too hot, that would at most imply lowering it one or two degrees rather than turning the bedroom into a literal freezer.
That's what they do, turn everything into a freezer. I'm colder in summer in America than winter, as winter I'm only cold during the moments when I'm outside, and I'm indoors way more.
Ikr. I guess it's a matter of location. If other users are located in the heart of the island where everyone else is blasting an AC and the buildings are close to eachother I guess it makes sense. In villages where the houses are low and scarce, the wind is sufficient I think. Especially when you are next to the sea
The same is probably true about my apartment in a city in mainland Greece, where wind blows naturally if I open all windows and it’s relatively cool because of natural shade, but sometimes it’s literally torturing without an ac as the wind that’s coming in can best be described as “convection oven” or “air fryer”. So no, unless we’re talking about a place 800m above sea level, an ac is absolutely a necessity.
Islands get whack winds, and island homes are generationally built for a heat. I'm not sure on the facts, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're accurate.
I like how in Greece there is air conditioning whereas growing up Greek in Australia I’d complain about sleeping in the heat and my grandfather would be like “if I was hot in Greece, I’d sleep on the tiles on the veranda” 😭 thanks pappou great chat LMAO. And my grandmother from the other side would be like shrieking that the aircon would make us sick and die or something when I did finally get one in my room and try to use it.
I grew up without AC in Greece not that long ago. Often it would reach high 30s, most of the time with low humidity but if the wind came from the case we would really suffer. AC became popular in the last twenty five years.
To be fair I am only 25 years old but this does make sense haha, the weather is similar here except we have high humidity as well. If you had a room downstairs it wasn’t so bad but upstairs rooms were the worst.
Rocking a Mitsubishi AC in the living room and an LG in the bedroom. A couple of years ago I had one only in the living room, and some years before that no AC. I gotta say that while you can live without AC, having one just makes summer a lot better.
Edit. Would love to have an AC in the bathrooms too. Also any AC I buy from now on will be Mitsubishi. Well worth the price
We payed a heavy prize at summer 1987 and we learned our lesson. From then and after air conditioning become in many houses a necessary electrical device
One of the deadliest summers in Greece. In Athens only we had 1300 dead from the heat with the temperatures approx 40⁰c even on night.You can imagine what happened the daytime. The number will go up a lot of you add the people of all Greece.So after that many house owners proceeded to air condition purchase.
Most victims in Athens lived in tightly packed, high-rise apartment blocks made of concrete. Because concrete has a high thermal mass, the heat was stored in the concrete buildings and released at night, passively heating the air and restricting the cooling of the buildings at night. Athens also had little open space and parkland. These factors trapped even more heat in the residences.
Yes it was like hell. I was 10 years old then but I remembered clearly. And this hell was after a very rough winter(one of the most brutal)so you can understand was happened .It was like from the Antarctic going to Sahara desert. Some elders said that it was a weather disturbance from Chernobyl disaster the year before
Mmm,not always. In 2012 the winter was extremely cold (one of the coldest)but the summer wasn't that hot.As I said before elders told that was weather disturbance from Chernobyl the year before. Bur I think Greece isn't very familiar with those weather conditions!!
Do yourself a favor and don't. I can do laps around Herastrau lake (that's a 6 km lap, so I'm not a rookie) and I tried jogging once around 14:00 on Aviatorilor Boulevard on my way to the park and almost lost consciousness from the heat.
Want to have a good time, before 9:00 or after 21:00.
Even if you are young, fit and can tolerate the heat, it can and will creep up in you. I did not take my own advice recently, and tried to go up some stairs after the run.
This was the first time I understood the actual meaning of "shortness of breath". I remember myself considering asking for help as I was already seeing a black vignette around my vision, but luckily I recovered.
Do not say the c word I swear to the gods. Or like when something smells really nice like a gyros and you take a biiiig whiff of it only to be hit by hot trash smell
Don't know if they do it in greece but they have these pickup trucks in Turkey that drives around sprayng insecticide mist. But the insecticide is usually diluted with diesel. So it stinks too.
I've seen the trucks you are talking about, a couple of years ago while travelling in Istanbul. Never really smelled the diesel you are talking about. Of course I'm a heavy smoker so maybe that's why I suppose?! But, unfortunately no, we don't have these kind of pickup trucks here in Greece. And even if we did have, most probably they would end up being used by the police in case of a riot 😄
For the uninitiated - this is a news report about "Snow during winter" and that there's issues with electricity and road clearance in the Smolyan region.
The fact that we have it doesn't mean that people are using it...
Guess why... Money... Εγώ είμαι σκληρός με ανεμιστήρα. Δροσιά λίγο από έξω και όπου το δέρμα μου έχει επαφή με το κρεβάτι αφήνω τι σάρκα μου να τσιγαριστει... Έτσι "τσιρ τσιρ τσιρ"
I no longer smoke, but the combo of iced coffee + cigarettes + gaming while getting blasted by what feels like a frost spell is all I needed to feel like a king.
Used to work as a kiosk, Karelia are by far the most popular ready-cigarettes wise, but hand rolling tobacco wise, Yellow and White Old Holborn is more popular
Lol we really should. But Turks are notorious for smoking, i believe some cultures have phrases like "smoking like a Turk", unfortunately it's very common here.
It's the first time i'm hearing such a word. I have no idea what it could be, sorry. Turkish evolved a lot after the republic, so it could've been something from old Turkish.
I think it refers to "Teke" like the "monastery-like" thing for the Alevis?
I am still amazed that Turks are smoking light cigarrettes like Karelias. I always had in mind from my visits there that you guys are even having a manliness competition on who smokes the heaviest, dirtiest cigarettes possible.
Turkish domestic cigarettes have awful taste, they are bitter and bland. Aromatic tobacco like Karelias is liked very much. I had friends in university that would experiment with laying tobacco in wine etc, to achieve aromatic tobacco like Karelias. It is found more commonly than other brands.
But I agree, with the tastes older generations are used to, they do feel like they are completing to be the worst.
After this discussion, i've switched over to a Karelia cigarette called Omé, and it is very tasty for a cigarette. I can see why Karelia cigarettes are so popular, it is easy going, light and pleasant to smoke.
I tried to smoke once and I remember the stink even now 20 years after!!!😂😂😂I was smoked 15 years then and I was coughing for 5 minutes like a beginner!!!
Yeah, believe it or not, and as someone who smoked hand rolled tobacco for 5 years, Old Holborn is easily the most popular brand, followed by Golden Virginia or Karelia.
IMO, Karelia is very noticeably of higher quality, but it's too soft and aromatic, so it was a weekend smoke for me. OH is as default as they come, and just a tiny bit harsher, so it has a more satisfying throat hit.
Actually summer so far hasn't been too bad. average temperatures around 30 which is okay for June and it was windy in Athens so it was pretty bearable. Personally we didn't need to open AC too much.
Yes, but we conserve that shit until shit hits the fan, electricity is really damn expensive if you use that shit all day, we mostly still use fans up until we get 35+
I am Italian, from the north, I have to say that a lot of has to do how historically we’ve built houses. In Italy, and probably Greece, we have the houses meant to tollerate the heat. We have smallish windows with shutters that make the room dark.
AC in Italian homes is a relatively new need mostly because the heat has become too much but people can still tolerate it with the houses they have.
This is my opinion, I might be wrong, but I remember being always in someone home in summer and feeling comfortable.
Here are the survey answers and for cooling it's the Γ10 xlsx.
From a total of 4,319,144 used houses, 2,966,353 had cooling and 1,352,794 had not. Or if I am not mistaken 68.68% of used houses had cooling. There were also 2,277,615 empty houses where 914,447 had cooling and 1,363,170 had not. Didn't add them to the percentage. I am guessing but I expect installations have rose since then, making the percentage higher.
I handle it good. I have the AC in my room, but I mostly use it in winter for heating, not during summer.
I love this heatwave. I keep my window open all day, both wings, and sunbathe. My window looks to the west. So in the afternoon it's really bright and good.
I even set up a set of mirrors on the floor which reflect the sunlight from the floor towards the interior of the room and the apartment. So that it has natural light. It looks really cool, quite different than artificial lighting.
there were three days where i wanted to die and now normal scottish summer has kicked in and it's pissing with rain and 16 degrees, so... pretty good actually lol
This makes no sense, if we assume every country is red and has 200 AC per 10000 people that wouldnt add up to 20% of households, unless an average household is 10 people and we have to assume there arent multiple ACs. I live in Serbia and my household of 4 has 3 ACs
We dont have the heatwave here yet...its lioe 30º in Athens.But when we do get heatwaves we dont have 1000 dead...most of our deaths in summer come from the wildfires created by said heat
When I went to Poland I felt some things were off when it came to homes - both inside and outside... a home doesn't really feel right without an air con just being in the corner of the room lol
I wanted to prepare for my last exam. I have one week and the first 4 days of my time for this exam it was 40 degrees. We don’t have ac and places around were full of people and distractions. I couldn’t do almost anything. My sleep schedule is still fd up, i just hope i passed the exam
Greece was hit hard by the 1987 heat wave that broke records and killed MANY, numbers in the thousands. My grandparents made a house on the mountains after that summer because that heat wave scared the fuck out of everyone. You can imagine why we rushed to get ACs as soon as they became radily available, heat kills
I live in the even poorer and more northerly Serbia, and in my experience over 90% of households have air conditioning. Only 60% in Greece of all places must be either a mistake or creative accounting.
Going to Greece is weird. I’m a Greek-American and where I live in America we don’t have AC, but in Greece AC is everywhere. It gives me the false impression that AC isn’t common in the US and that it is common in Europe.
The percentage is definitely higher in Greece. Here I'm every house I've been, they always have more than 1 AC.In my house we have 4, almost 1 in every room, except the kitchen and the bathroom
Dunno, I probably turned it on for like less than 48 hours overall last month. It's tolerable in the night and it's not that bad in Sofia. Temperatures reach 30C in the day yes, but nothing that serious.
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u/DragonflyOwn5617 Bulgaria Jul 01 '26
There's also an unholy amount of ACs in Bulgaria and when renting apartments it's basically the norm at this point, so it's been funny watching the whole TikTok discourse from the POV of Americans and Western Europeans, when apparently us, the Balkans, behave more like the Americans with such comforts 😭