On Why deadphilosopher Is Simultaneously Full Of Shit And More Hardcore Than You

I do not know deadphilosopher. He does not know me. But what we both know is what Austria is like in the summer because we have both spent respectively unknown lengths of time there for indeterminate reasons. And because he knows that and I know that, I can safely tell you that he is lying and that he may or may not be laying in a pool of his own sweat because Austria is indisputably hellish in the summer.

While some might be disarmed by the beautiful countryside and the friendly, healthy people, Austria possesses three traits that might be hyperbolically inflated to justify claims that it is one of the hottest and most difficult places in the world in the summer: no airconditioning, no elevators in apartment buildings, and a totally inexplicable bias against screens on windows that it shares with Germany (Any man with an ounce of sense knows there has to be a more sinister reasoning to this than "It disrupts my view". An Axis plot? Don't rule it out.).

Let's start with the air conditioning. I'm willing to accept that you believe government has your best interests at heart by encouraging you to save power and forgo an air conditioner in the interest of preserving the environment. This is a common policy across Europe. What I'm not willing to believe was the sentiment expressed to me by various German and Austrians that a smidge of AC could be bad for my health. I'm not sure if this was simply a cultural quirk (like they claim about the screens) or some horrifying product of a socialist healthcare system that is attempting to kill off as many patients as possible through heat stroke to decrease total costs and divert the savings into their secret death panels. Either way, the reasoning is bunk and Austrians need to get over their global warming fears. It's a sham!

A bit more understandable is the lack of elevators. Apartment buildings in Vienna have been around for centuries and my acute historical intuition suggests that electrical elevators were rarely factored into building designs in 1798, nor were they air conditioned (not even then!). I suppose I can relate to the urge to keep up appearances in the more historic locales of Vienna but doesn't it ever get tempting to knock down just a few examples of your priceless architectural heritage? If only so you can take a nice air-conditioned elevator to the fourth floor instead of climbing up a stairwell while weighed down with your stereotypical European groceries (milk, coffee, cigarettes, and a kinder egg, nothing else)?

Finally, we come back to the screens (or lack thereof). Oh, the screens. You don't think you need them until it's late at night and you're sweating to death without air conditioning so you go to open a window. No sooner do you lift it open more than a crack do biblical swarms of insects fly through and overtake you. They gnaw at all your softest parts, seeking only the most succulent flesh and will leave you slapping at shadows in the dark. Your Austrian relative will arrive in the morning to meet you for coffee, see you covered in insect bites, muttering to yourself, and sporadically striking yourself, and just smile silently. He'll say nothing but in his eyes you'll see what he means to say: another humbled American and it iz all according to ze plan.

So deadphilosopher, I salute your ability to survive in a land where 99% of the native wildlife is poisonous and the only way to travel through your capital city is through rancid canals. For that, you are more hardcore than I will ever be. But it only fair that I point out, as I have, that Austria is a treacherous and horrifying place where you are liable to be eaten by a drop bear.