Das Wetter ist in Südfrankreich besser
Posted by mofembot Sun, 19 Jul 2009 07:28:00 GMT
The weather is better in southern France than in Hamburg. (“No duh,” I hear you say.) Actually, I think the weather is better in pretty much any part of France, including Paris and Le Nord/Pas de Calais, than it is in Hamburg. Even the weather in more southerly parts of Germany (think Heidelberg, where I work on-site from time to time) is better than the weather here.
The reality is that I will have to pretend that any “brightening” illuminating the sea of clouds covering the sky is the equivalent of unveiled sunshine, or I will succumb to a gloom to match the heavens here. That must be how the Hamburgers survive. They are far enough north, of course, that the days of winter, dreary though they be, are shortened almost to match nearby Scandinavia’s. And as with Scandinavia, the “summer” daylight (such as it is) extends far into the evening and pops up far earlier than down south in France. I wonder, therefore, if Hamburgers are afflicted with seasonal affective disorder at the same rates as their even-more-northern neighbors.
—Seasonal, schmeasonal: the seemingly unrelenting cloud coverage, day after day, is enough to spread the SAD far beyond the bounds of winter.
So as a survival tactic (given my frailty owing to growing up mostly in smoggy-but-sunny L.A.), I’ve decided that “good weather” by Hamburger standards is simply not actively raining. Or raining only a little bit. “Not raining” will have to become my new definition of “sunny.” I will label a real sunny day a “miracle,” because the chances of having a full day packed with sunshine are exceedingly rare, as is the chance that the temperature is going to make its way upward of 70ºF. (Today’s high is supposed to be 18ºC = 64.4ºF. And it’s the middle of frickin’ July — you know, “summertime.”) Yesterday’s high might have broken 70ºF, but by late afternoon, only a few hardy souls downtown were still parading about in their Ts or tanktops. Almost everyone was wearing at least a sweater… a sweater at 5 p.m. In mid-frickin’-July.