Four days later we arrive at the hotel in Munich. It is very fancy. And very famous. And Strong With A Spear feels not too angry because most of the Germans are Bavarians here and speak his kind of German.

Bavaria is known for its cool climate. The day we arrive it is 102 degrees. That’s Fahrenheit. I call that hot, no matter where you are. The Müncheners (you noticed the umlaut, huh?) are sweating profusely and acting like junkyard dogs on an August day in Mississippi. The lobby of our hotel is the only air conditioned room in the entire city and tightly packed with sweaty people.

We ascend to our tenth floor suite in an elevator that could have been used as a a sweat lodge. But it is as cool as fresh dew compared with our south-facing room.

I collapse on the couch. Strong With A Spear gives the porter a giant tip and asks if they have any fans.

The porter stands about five foot one, if you could have stood him up straight. His curved spine made him look like the hook of a question mark, giving him the stature of one of those gnomes you see in illustrated fairy tale books. He was about 104, gnarled, wizened, slow of gait. I felt guilty letting him lift our bags. When I tried to help he shrugged me away. Maybe he was feeling as sorry for me in my bent over state as I was feeling for him in his. But the tip – now that lit up his watery old eyes. He scuttled off nodding and grunting.

Ten minutes later he returned pushing a machine that only my great grandmother could have loved. About the size of a Laz-E-Boy, it stood nearly as tall as he did, was about two feet across and had a huge vacuum cleaner-type hose sticking out of its boxlike top and a fat black cord coming from underneath. He wheeled it over to the window then wedged himself behind it. Taking the big brass window handle, he flung it up to unlatch it, then pushed the great window wide open.

Great. More stifling afternoon air. What a good solution to the heat situation.

He plugged in the cord and a fan’s roar filled the room. Before backing out bobbing and bowing as if we were royalty, he flung the giant hose out the window. I stood there staring at this contraption wondering what it was supposed to do. Bring in more hot air? Exchange our hot air for the hot air outside? Make fun of us in some great plot to show that American’s are indeed the most gullible people on Earth? Gingerly, Strong With A Spear moves closer to the CONTRAPTION. He eyes it quizzically. He goes from one side to the other. It hums along merrily, oblivious to his presence. He puts a hand out the window. He feels the air inside the room. He pokes the hose. He fiddles with the dials on top of the box.

“It’s an air conditioner.” He announces proudly.

“I can see that, dear.” This is my second lie. I never patronize him by using the word “dear.” I do it in other ways.

“No, look.” He pulls the hose inside. “This is releasing hot air to the outside. And these vents,” he places his hand in front of the thing’s grill, “release cooled air into the room. This thing actually works.”

It does feel slightly cooler.

“Isn’t it an odd way to cool the air inside by opening the window and letting more hot air inside?” I query.

Maybe I’m just not mechanically inclined but I do feel Americans have earned their bragging rights to air conditioning. Along with Corn Flakes. When the history of the “developed” world is studied in, say, two thousand years, the way we now study the early Christian era or the Chinese dynasties, I’m convinced air conditioning will rank as one of our finest moments. What about SPACE TRAVEL you ask? I doubt it will have the same relative significance. After all it was really air conditioning in post WWII America that allowed scientists to think on hot days at all. And to drive from place to place for their meetings of the minds. Otherwise they would have had to go to the mountains and sit in cool streams all day and that is no way to do advanced calculus.

Male bathers

Imagine, if you will, the following scene:

Edward Teller, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking are sitting in a cool stream passing the day while jays and titmice squabble in the trees above their heads.

Einstein says: “Isn’t zis vasser refreszhink?”

Hawking replies: “Itssss [click] muchuh betterrrrr [click click] thanuh thatuh hohttt [click] lecturrrr roomuh [click whoosh].”

Teller is mute. He wiggles his toes in the sand of the stream bed and plays with a handful of pebbles, tossing them in the air and watching them fall with a splash into the stream. He seems fascinated by the explosion-like ripple effect .
Hawking, whose breathing apparatus and chair sit just at the edge of the water so that his toes can dangle in the stream, watches the pebbles land. He yawns, which pulls great thwunps of air through his breathing/talking machine.
Einstein skips a flat rock against the current.

He poses a question: “Vhat do you tink vould happen to time ifv man vould be able to ezscape zuh pull of all zuh grrravitayzhonal vorces of all zuh planutz?”

Hawking: “Whatttuh issss a planutz uuuuhh [click whoosh]?”

No one answers and soon they are all lulled into a nap from which they awake in time to put their shoes back on and go to take a glass of iced tea.

See what I mean? It would have been way too exhausting to fight the heat AND come up with concept shattering formulas. No, they needed the structure of bland, academic air-conditioned surroundings to come up with their breakthroughs, thus moving mankind inexorably forward (to be talked about further later on, when we get to Technology).