Another apocryphal British headline: “Fog in Channel, Continent Cut Off”
I was in Germany in the summer of 1983 when the temp got up to 85 F. & stayed there. Off came women’s bathing tops; many were worth a look.
I spent several years living in Europe in the early 1990, mostly Germany, but also Italy and Portugal.
The German summers without A/C weren’t all that bad, but one hotel I spent several months at had no screens so you had a choice between sweating all night or waking up covered with mosquito bites. Got the the point where I made a count of new bites every morning - record was 29. Eventually one of my German colleagues showed me their trick - a wall plug in insect fogger. That worked more or less, along with flypaper.
Italy was worse in the summer as the heat lasted longer and 90F days were not uncommon.
One interesting thing I remember well about Italy were the roadside prostitutes - they were on high seats, with a beach type umbrella, overall very similar to a beach lifeguard arrangement. The ones I saw were all black women, probably from Italian speaking parts of Africa. When I asked about it, I was told that their primary clientele were truck drivers... this was on a relatively rural two-lane highway 5 or so miles outside a town with a population of perhaps 25K people. In any event, never saw anything like that in my European travels.