Methinks The Fix Is In

After over 1 month of sub-freezing temps, Nuremberg was greeted with a most welcome blast of spring-like weather-- almost 50 degrees Fahrenheit today!! The remaining snowdrifts are almost gone, though I'm sure we'll have at least one more round of snow and cold before it's all said and done. That being said, just 3 days ago it was 8 degrees(?!) at 8:00am. And as usual, my German neighbors had their apartment windows flung wide open.

As you can see by the illustration (click on photo for larger version), it is considered a good thing to open your windows every day for a certain amount of time for up to 30 minutes; preferably several times each day. This is a prevalent phenomenon country-wide, though I have yet to hear a definitive reason as to why this is. Ostensibly, it's to let the damp air "out," and fresh air in. Fine, except the hole in that logic is that morning air can be quite damp (hence the phenomenon called "dew," plus German port cities like Hamburg for example, are basically always damp so you are in fact letting the dry air out), and you are letting mold spores into the house that way. Living in a semi-basement, we have the advantage of a certain degree of insulation year-round, and the place is drafty enough (our building was erected in 1899) where we never have a stale air problem, much less mold. It all seems a bit silly, particularly when you consider the exorbitant cost of energy here and there's the rub: look at that illustration again. It was created by an energy or gas company. I can't imagine anything that will increase one's heating bill in the winter and A/C or electric fan bill in the summer than opening the windows several times during the day. While I have no doubts that this sort of thing made complete sense before the advent of modern building materials, it seems hopelessly outdated now, and is being done largely on the wings of hidebound and passed-down behavior, and seemingly egged-on by the energy companies. Look, I'm not against opening windows, just against opening them for no better reason than "we've always done it that way."