This week, the Euro summer officially ends - and with it, a certain type of Instagram posting. You know the ones: azure Greek coves, plates of barbecued sardines, yachts rented by the hour, and selfies on a Paris Airbnb balcony, wine in hand, under the long blue night.
But this year, lurking just out of frame, was the heat. You can't photograph heat easily, but it infused the season so monumentally that it might have just killed the Euro summer dream dead. Starting in late May, extreme heat broke temperature records across western Europe, turning the holiday of a lifetime into a sweaty endurance test for hundreds of millions of tourists.
Who dreams of a Euro summer now, when sleeping in an ancient, uncooled building in the Old Town feels like trying to nap inside a wood-fired pizza oven? How aspirational is it to spend your days in an air-conditioned shopping centre (if you can find one) because visiting a cathedral risks heatstroke?
Travel is meant to be pleasurable. Holidays are supposed to be relaxing. But heat of this intensity and duration is incompatible with tourism - it becomes dangerous. This summer, major attractions closed early or restricted access: Notre-Dame Cathedral limited tower visits in June, the Eiffel Tower announced a 4pm closure, and the Louvre followed suit. Cities sweltered, smelling of the Middle Ages - decomposing rubbish, sweat, and hot bodies. The heat drove people mad, with some throwing themselves into canals at 2am because their apartments trapped heat, making sleep impossible.
Critical infrastructure failed across Europe: overheated signal systems, melting asphalt affecting tram tracks, and buckling train rails. New trees planted for shade in Rome's Piazza Risorgimento, near St Peter's Basilica, were burnt to a crisp, according to CNN, while benches with dark plastic and wood became searingly hot and unusable.
The heat also wreaks havoc on the body, causing confusion and disorientation. With heatstroke, you need to sweat to cool down, but your skin stays parched; you crave fluid but forget to drink. At least 35,000 more people died than expected in Europe this summer due to back-to-back heatwaves, with heatstroke a culprit.
Humans have a strange psychological quirk: once summer passes, we remember it was hot and horrible, but the physical and mental distress fades. The body forgets until next time. The brain stores the fact of heat, not the sensation. But now is the time to prepare for next year, which could be even hotter.
Australia, though imperfect in climate adaptation - often reactionary, piecemeal, and ad hoc - has experience with long, uncomfortable summers. Some approaches have proven useful: public education campaigns about the sun; shade cloths in schools and public places; sunhats in school uniforms; rethinking work-from-home rules for those without air conditioning, or splitting the working day to avoid peak heat; major investments in urban design that assume extreme temperatures (large stone plazas, like those across Europe, absorb and radiate heat ferociously); air conditioning on public transport and in public buildings; more trees; water fountains in public spaces; labour laws protecting outdoor workers, with mandatory conditions; heat-warning systems with legal obligations (cancelled school, outdoor work, and events); and making shorts socially acceptable in the office.
Or, the other big change: Australians could skip the annual Euro summer pilgrimage and enjoy the chill in the air at home. Brigid Delaney is the author of five books, including The Seeker and the Sage.