The Feel Good Way

Just when I get off the plane, there is a warm humid draft. It’s the sensation you get when you arrive in a tropical country. For a second I am confused. Am I in winter or in summer? Where am I? Why does this feel off? Then it all comes back to me.

I am in winter… Climate is just messing with my head.

Winter is my favorite season in BA. It’s definitely much more fun then the blazing hot summers. Winters here are mild but nice and cool. So you can imagine my surprise when it I realise it’s actually warmer here in winter then it is in Belgium where it is summer.

I don’t like it.

When I go for a walk I leave my jacket at home and wear my light sweater around my shoulders, thinking I am prepared for a this warm winter day. I am not. It is 27 degrees and humid, ‘feels like 36’ my phone says, for what that’s worth. I am sweating like hell. I walk towards my destination over Santa Fe avenue, where one shop next to the other has a whole wall filled with colored woolen hats. Hats!! All the shop windows display winter clothes : warm sweaters, shawls, thick coats, boots. I get even hotter just seeing all those warm winter clothes while outside it feels like summer. I can’t shake the feeling that the shop goods are out of place. Of course it’s just a feeling, and that feeling is wrong.

But even though it is shorts-and-T-shirt-weather, everyone (except maybe an occasional tourist) is dressed in winter clothes. Me included. It’s winter so we wear winter clothes. Occasionally I see bare arms, but not much more than that. And I wonder : why aren’t our clothes related to the actual weather instead of the season? Why do we wear whatever what we wear, even if it isn’t adjusted to the actual weather?

I think about this odd phenomenon while continuing my walk. It’s not just here, it’s not just now. It’s everywhere. Many Belgians have a similar behaviour. In summer they wear summer clothes. When it is 12 degrees and a strong east wind in June, you see women dressed in nothing more than a short sundress, bare legs and shoulders, guys in shorts and sandals, when at the same time I am wearing a sweater and a warm coat and boots (because I am actually feeling cold)! With those same 12 degrees in winter everyone is wearing warm winter clothes.

Why?

Anybody?

I decide that tomorrow I will dress more appropriately. Clothes adapted to the weather instead of the season.

But when I wake up, the unseasonable weather is gone. Winter is back. I can wear winter clothes without feeling too hot, and I even wish I were the owner of one of the hats that I saw on display in the stores yesterday. I am cold.

Cold but good.
Winter in Buenos Aires is the best!
Winter in BA is a delight!