Trying to Beat the Heat

A few of us went into Geneva yesterday; on the way to the tram station I complained about how brutality of the heat. Immediately, one of my friends commented "you know it's really hot when Megan is complaining about it." The first few weeks I was here the weather was perfect: highs in the upper 70s/low 80s and lows in the mid 60s. There was even one week where the weather was consistently below 70, and it was quite chilly. However, the temperatures this past week are the hottest Geneva has recorded in over a decade. The temperature climbed to 97 degrees yesterday.

Yes, I do realize I am from Miami where it is summer all year long, but this is much different. First off, in St. Genis/Geneva, we aren't blessed with any ocean breeze. At all. The second you step onto the pavement you can feel the heat radiating from the ground below you, while simultaneously feeling the sun's rays beating down on you from above. Secondly, and possibly more important, air conditioning is extremely limited here. This means that there is no escape--you go inside trying to evade the sun's beating rays, but instead are trapped in an oven. My office at CERN gets especially overheated: we have limited ventilation--our window seems to trap the sun's heat more than let a breeze in--and the combination of 5 people and 7 computers generating enormous amounts of heat is a recipe for disaster. Honestly, Becky and I have joked about using our office to bake in since we have no oven in our apartment.

Thankfully, we ended up our day in the heat by taking a dip in Lake Geneva. We went to an area on the lake called "Baby Beach," which was essentially a 200 ft strip of sand with every inch of it covered by people. However, the lake water was a perfect chilled temperature. I also had not been able to go swimming for the past couple months, so being able to do some open water swimming was an absolutely incredible feeling. I miss the water and swimming. This was hands down the best, most refreshing way to beat the Geneva heat.

Geneve's Baby Plage