heatwaves // june 2026

staying cool, halal snack packs, and more snippets from my europe trip

heatwaves in the middle of june

After being out of the country for several weeks, I woke up jet-lagged in the dark, cold, and rainy Sydney night feeling like my entire trip was a fever dream.

The overarching theme of my European travels: it was hot as hell. I didn’t expect to be caught up in record-breaking heatwave after heatwave, pointing fans out of windows for maximal airflow with it still being 29°C at 10PM.

The only thing that kept me going was a) discovering siestas and b) thinking it was nice to finally relate to songs about heatwaves and late-nights in the middle of June.

Sydney can get pretty hot during the summer, but not without respite. Our nights are much cooler, and the lack of insulation drops temperatures quickly. There are more air-conditioned spaces to escape to, more shade in the streets, and cool beaches to catch sunsets at, even on work days.

During the second heatwave of our trip, I abandoned all sightseeing plans for my day in Vienna and visited the nearest Decathlon. Honestly, this was inevitable. I’d spent the past few days thinking about how nice the weather was for swimming, regretting my decision not to pack swimmers, researching the risks of swimming with contact lenses, and being taunted by the most beautiful 50m outdoor pool outside my hotel window, probably spawned by Chekhov himself. I used my newly-bought swimmers many times on this trip :)

highlights include:

• discovering hands-free height-adjustable hair dryers and free lockers accessed through RFID wristbands (INNOVATION).

• the German pool attendant who managed to communicate “take off your clothes and shower without your swimmers before entering the pool” through ten minutes of pure charades (kinda risky to interpret them wrong, ya know).

• Lake Thun in Switzerland, where kite-surfers in wetsuits complained about the cold, and I had to spend several minutes working up the courage to plunge in with a group of strangers watching from behind (glacial waters are indeed COLD).

• Innsbruck’s Freibad Tivoli with not one, not two, but five swimming pools nestled in the Austrian alps, and the crispiest hot chips to curb hunger.

  

  photo from the official site, holyyyyy look at that view

• the Eisbach surfer wave in Munich, at the entrance of the English Gardens. I didn’t swim here. I swam in the nearby Isar River instead. But it was SUPER cool watching surfers catch a land-locked wave in the middle of the city. No need to paddle out to sea, or pay exorbitant fees for artificial wave pools.

  

  not pictured: how rapid the river is, and all the "do not swim, you may die" signs along it

halal snack packs need to go international

New Zealand calls them “meat on chips” and delivers. In Switzerland, they had “doner meat and fries.” After a day of getting lost in the Swiss Alps, I ended up at a kebab store and wanted my favourite late-night comfort food, a halal snack pack. Surely, for a heartbreaking 15 Swiss francs, my cravings would be satisfied.

The guy at the counter asks what sauce I want.

garlic, bbq, and sweet chili please
(the holy trinity)

he pauses and looks up from the till
um… we only have garlic.

oh… that’s fine, I’ll have garlic then

A couple minutes later, I receive a small round paper box with some thinly-sliced lamb on chips and garlic sauce drizzled over it.

It was in that moment that I learnt halal snack packs were born in Australia, and not available in kebab shops worldwide.

the first entry on wikipedia for HSPs from April 2016

I had my first HSP in early 2016, after the dish became widely popular thanks to all the memes, appreciation groups, and marketing stunts that formed in solidarity against a certain politician who didn’t “believe in halal certification.” That’s an Australian rags-to-riches story right there. I reckon we need to do more to make HSPs trendy. Have it pop off on TikTok and get this everywhere else in the world.

some more travel highlights

• mortadella with pistachio pesto and burrata in Bologna. we’re sleeping on pistachios in sandwiches, a goated combination.

• eating fondue and thinking “man, this is really just Swiss hotpot”, then discovering that the Swiss call hotpot “fondue chinoise”

  

  dipping pizza ingredients into cheese

• outdoor, public karaoke stages along the river in Rome and at Munich’s pride festival, and crowds of strangers going all-in singing the chorus of Hot N Cold by Katy Perry, while mumbling with the verses

• taking in the sheer scale of Rome’s monuments alone at night with Bastille’s Bad Blood in full-blast, and missing the last subway home

• this very cozy crafts space in Innsbruck and the regulars who waved me in and showed me around after I looked too closely at the window. people were repairing clothes and sewing gifts for their friends. I think every makerspace with their 3D printers and laser cutters needs to have a homely crafts space attached

hitting the midpoint

We’re past the midpoint of 2026. I’m not sure whether it’s a holy shit we’re already half-way through the year or a holy shit, we’re only half-way through the year (probably both).

It’s been a pretty full-on month, and I’m strapped in for more to come.

I’m pretty happy that this substack has made it this far. I hope to continue writing into the second-half of the year, so stay tuned and subscribe if you’re casually browsing to show your support :)

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