how to survive (and maybe even thrive) in an Athenian summer

Greek summer is legendary. The phrase probably calls to mind images of tanned, relaxed, very chic people lounging on a beach, sipping frosty beers in their little speedos and teeny bikinis.

And while the speedos are really and really small (although almost always seen on a paunchy pappou (grandfather)), and the Greeks do get quite tan, this ideal does not prepare you for the reality of an Athenian summer.

Especially if you, like me, are American.

I can hear you already starting to protest: “Kathleen! I’m from Texas/Florida/Arizona! I know heat!”

You don’t know, though, the particular heat of this specific city in July and August (and often June, although happily not this year!). And if you’re planning a visit, or dreaming of moving here, there are some things you should know.

This is both a survival guide and a love letter. (And for those of you suffering across Europe right now, read on for some tips that might help you as well!)

Greek summer heat is different. It’s dry, in Athens at least, although not in Preveza where I usually visit one of my friends in late August, or in Thessaloniki either. And that dry heat does help, as you sweat and the sweat evaporates and cools you, unlike in the short-lived but muggy Boston heatwaves where you feel like you are inside of someone’s mouth.

We have winds too — the summer meltemi, which blows in the afternoon into the early evening usually and brings some relief from the sweltering sun.

But that sun — whew. It doesn’t just burn you, because that’s too passive of a way to describe it. It sears you like a steak on the grill, driving into the very core of your body even though it hits only the skin, like you have been basted in oil and laid on top of the flames and left to sizzle and smoke.

“The cicada exploded,” the Greeks say when the mercury has climbed into the unbearable registers. And if you’ve ever seen these ugly insects droning their little hearts out in the trees in the peak heat of the day, you know how hot it has to be for them to fall victim to it.

The heat is persistent too — perhaps in Arizona they’re used to this, but in Boston the heat comes in waves and dips. Here in Athens it’s a straight 3-4 months of days with an almost unbearably clear blue sky and highs that start at 33C/90F degrees, with maybe one or two rainy days in that whole stretch of time to break it up. The insistent glare of the sun starts to feel like a personal attack by the end of July, and we know there’s no relief in sight for at least another month.

Athens in summer especially is not a city. It is an enormous oven, as we have too much concrete and too few green spaces and trees to cool it down. You often feel, when you’re out on the streets, that you are slowly being roasted alive from the ground up as it absorbs the strong, direct sunlight and doesn’t cool down until midnight, if at all. The heat radiates from the streets, the buildings, the sky, everywhere but our cool and shady parks, which you may or may not have nearby.

It’s the definition of the urban heat island effect in action, and maybe we will someday do… something about it, but despite Athens having a very highly publicized Chief Heat Officer for years nothing seems to be moving except those still unairconditioned metro cars, so I am carrying a small basket (one of my favorite Greek idioms that means I’m keeping my expectations low).

But ok, yes, the US has some very, very hot places too! Phoenix, parts of California, Oklahoma which I have not been to ever but have heard about the boiling heat, most of the state of Texas, etc. The US has a much hotter climate in general than Europe — this is all quite true.

However, there is hot weather Outside and then there is feeling and living IN the heat — and this is very, very different in hot places in the US. There, your house has central air conditioning set (probably, I don’t actually know you) at a lovely stable cool low all the time. If you need to go outside, you get in your air-conditioned car, drive to a restaurant that is the temperature of a meat locker, drink an enormous soda that’s half full of ice, walk around a shop that’s also cooled to an absurd degree, and drive back home.

(Some of you will yell at me now, yes that’s not everyone! I never had an apartment with air conditioning in Boston, or a car either, and we have some heat in the summers. But as a generalization this is pretty accurate for the American lifestyle.)

Two summers ago, I went to the Newport Folk Festival with friends, a tradition I love. It was a hot day, as it always is, in a park without much shade. We were thrilled at the thought of heading out for the night and stopping at Newport Creamery (iykyk) to cool back down with some Awful Awful milkshakes and AC.

But believe me when I tell you, the temperature inside of this restaurant, it took me DAYS to warm back up. It was like sitting in the back part of my fridge, where the condensation gets frozen into little droplets on the rear wall and anything shoved back there freezes too. It was insane on so many levels — wasteful, so shamefully wasteful, and also one of the most unpleasant experiences of that summer. It felt like an attack after spending all day out in the heat and the sun. And of course, they served us huge glasses of water filled most of the way up with ice, as if we needed to cool off any more. However we did also eat a grilled cheese sandwich which had mozzarella sticks inside, and that was both terrifying and pretty tasty.

In Greece, although we do not meet the American stereotype of a Europe without AC and iced coffee, it is not at all the same.

The air-con is not central, it’s mini-splits that you need to turn off when you leave the home or the hotel room because energy costs a fortune here, easily four times what I paid in the US. Shops that have it also usually have the windows open, and the AC temp is not super low (they would go bankrupt).

And restaurants — I actually have no idea what the temperature is like inside of a restaurant in summer, because why are you in Greece in summer and eating inside?! Whenever I have visitors from the US and they say things like “we could eat inside” I experience a deep and profound cultural shock because this genuinely no longer occurs to me. We don’t even consider doing this unless it’s winter, and even then we eat and drink outside whenever possible thanks to heaters.

So, you will feel the heat so much more than you would in a Phoenix summer. You will be outside. You will be walking to places, and back from them. You will get home and the AC will not have been blasting all day waiting for you, although our homes are built to stay cool. There is no enormous glass full of ice on every table, though there is freddo espresso or cappuccino and this is the greatest substance on earth. (This is what this newsletter runs on.)

That’s the difference. In America the heat is something that you experience in the rare moments when you go Outside, which is a separate part of your life. In Athens you live a lot of your life outside, and you will actually, truly feel hot more. (In late July though when it’s really brutal you will often find me on the couch, AC on at 75F/24C degrees, not venturing anywhere until at least 7pm.)

The best way to manage is to adapt.

Slow down. No speed walking, no hustling, no unnecessary effort. Yes, you will get less done. You will see fewer sights. You will have to adapt yourself to the natural flow of the seasons, instead of wrestling them into compliance so you can do the same thing every single day, over and over.

Stay inside from 2-5pm — this is siesta hours for a reason and also legally quiet hours, because it is so ingrained in the culture that this is a time for rest. You will notice if you venture out during this time that the streets are abandoned, in Athens and everywhere else. There’s not a Greek in sight. Even the beaches typically empty out at this time because it’s too hot to enjoy laying on the scorching sand or rocks.

But this is also why Greeks eat dinner late, especially in summer. A 10pm dinner reservation may sound insane to Americans — it did to me when I first moved here — but in July and August, it’s pretty blissful. The soft summer night, after the sun has sunk below the horizon, with a little breeze on your freshly showered skin while you’re wearing a loose light dress and thin sandals, this is heaven. It is actually, truly too hot at 7pm to enjoy and digest a meal, you will just drip sweat into your Greek salad.

Plus, you had that afternoon siesta! So now you can stay up a little later.

The mornings of summer are so important too. No lollygagging in bed — get up and get out and get done what needs to be done while it’s not a furnace outside. I love to head out the door at 7am on Sunday mornings to head to the beach while the streets of Athens are not yet a furnace, sit on an empty and air-conditioned bus, and enjoy the beach until about 1pm when I make my very sweaty way home and after a cool shower, turn on the AC and have a serious siesta.

But this slow, sweaty summer has its own beauty. The smells of jasmine in the night air in June, wild oregano and thyme flowering in the hills, whatever your neighbors are cooking as you drape yourself on the lounger on your balcony and sip a post-beach Mamos beer with your oregano potato chips. Athens smells surprisingly great for a big city in summer.

The glare of the sun, and the sudden relief of the taverna table shaded by an enormous vining tree that’s grown for decades above it. Or the feeling of melting into the sea after the long, hot walk to the beach, floating in the cool silky water like a little gull. The nap you take in the crisp cotton sheets of your bed that smell like the wind in the pine trees, with the air conditioning on and the shutters closed tightly against the sun. The cool gentle breeze of the morning when you open the shutters after you wake, and remember what coolness feels like once more.

A little bit of suffering, and then a bit of beautiful salvation. Is my Catholic upbringing coming out here? Maybe.

But the American way, where you are just in spaces that are exactly 68 degrees all the time, is not only environmentally destructive but also dilutes our capacity to handle heat and cold and being outside most of the year without dying.

It’s ok to be a bit hot in summer — it’s summer. The more you do it, the more your body acclimates to it. This is how I can now wear full-length jeans in June, and venture out every day to my office across town in the searing heat of July. I go early, I wear my light little outfits, I take a freddo espresso in my insulated cup and I hop into a fresh cool shower as soon as I get home. Yes I sweat, yes it’s hot, but I can’t stay locked inside for weeks at a time. And the enforced slowness is a seasonal reminder that we all need rest and restoration and two hours sitting down over a single freddo once in a while.

That being said, if you are not acclimated to this kind of heat and exerting yourself in it, please be very, very careful! People die every year of dehydration and heat stroke on hikes here (mostly older Dutch people who don’t realize Greece is very hilly and set off in the middle of the day with no water or hat). Know the signs of heatstroke and be proactive if you start to feel them even a little bit.

• Dress for it! Protect the skin, you might think that being nearly naked will help but in the direct sunlight you want a layer between you and Helios. He is a brutal, punishing god. Loose linen clothes are a blessing in this weather at the beach, as are hats. But in the city if you’re not in direct sun much, then yes go skimpy.

• In the early morning when you wake up, open up all the windows to let in the cooler fresh air. Then once the temperature climbs, which it does surprisingly fast, close the shutters and the windows and the curtains too. In an Athenian home, you’ll stay pretty cool until the sun sets in the evening when you can open things back up. You will think that opening the windows lets in the breeze, but that’s what fans are for, and if you have the windows open when it’s 38C/95F degrees, it will soon be that hot in your home too. Trust me — this is why every home and apartment here has awnings and functional shutters.

• Bring a chic little hand fan. This is clutch in any public transit situation, like down in the bowels of the metro or when you get a metro car without airconditioning, which is 1/3 of the trains on my line. But it’s also great if you finally sit down to an evening spritz and it’s still a bit hot from the day, or the breeze dies, or you are just a very sweaty person (hi it’s me, yes it’s very glamorous).

• Be careful with alcohol. I personally cannot drink more than one drink until the evening so a two-beer lunch is out if I don’t want to throw up on the walk home from the heat. Even too much coffee can be bad (it hurts my heart to say this but it’s true). A fresh orange juice or homemade lemonade at a cafe is delicious and also will re-hydrate you.

• If you are sweating a lot (again hi it’s me) you also may need to up your sodium intake! I actually eat a fair amount of potato chips when I am outside a lot in summer to compensate for the salt I lose in my sweat. You don’t need to pack expensive electrolytes either (they are very hard to find here), just drink an orange juice and a mineral water (that’s all of our bottled water) and eat some oregano potato chips and you will be both very, very happy with your life and also feel much better.

• Drink 3 times more water than you think you need to, before you even feel thirsty. I don’t know why Americans find it so difficult to find water in Europe (like seriously you guys what is going on?!) but you can buy a huge bottle for 1 euro for the basic brands at any kiosk, mini market, grocery store, etc. The price of the basic brands of water is legally capped in Greece! Fun fact. (I can’t give you a list of the brands because it varies but you have eyes to check the prices, now that you know what to look for.)

Stay cool, stay relaxed, stay up late and don’t worry about it too much because you’re either here on vacation or living in Greece and so you gotta adapt. Go with the flow, or as we say in Greek, χαλαρά, ρε. And you might find that you like this slow summer pace after all, as you lift another oregano chip into your mouth watching the sun set wherever in Greece you are.

thank you for reading! if you would like to support me with a subscription, for less than a coffee a month you can help me write more helpful content like this! or share my work to help me grow. or you can buy me a coffee! it will be a freddo espresso, and it will keep me cool as the summer really kicks off. a thousand thanks!

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