It's hot!

We're had a stretch of very hot weather here in Geneva - a high yesterday of 33 degrees Celcius (91 Fahrenheit).  The air conditioning situation is this - almost no buildings have air conditioning, including our apartment.  There's lots of blinds and shutters to block out the sun, which is very handy - critical, really, when the sun is streaming in.

The office building where I work has air conditioning...kind of.  In reality, it never works.  Really.  It's not standard air conditioning, which is apparently forbidden in Switzerland on the grounds of high energy consumption.  It's these weird ceiling mounted pipes, that have cold water flowing through them.  They worked one morning, a lot of condensation formed on the ceiling (it's designed for that, made of metal), and it was pleasantly cool.  That was nice, but it was just for one morning.  The rest of the time, during this stretch of really hot weather, it's just been really warm at the office.  People are wearing shorts, and some little USB fans have been distributed, they help a lot.  Also yesterday I brought a frozen water bottle from home and sipped on it throughout the day, that cooled me down tremendously. I wasn't even warm while everyone else was complaining about the heat.

At home, we keep the blinds down, turn on the fans at night, and we manage to beat the heat.  Occasionally when I come in from walking around outside, and am really hot, I fill the bathroom sink with cold tap water and soak my arms for a while, that cools me down quite well.

EDIT: The air conditioning at work is fixed now, and it's actually quite cool there!  I need to wear a fleece in the office to feel comfortable.