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The hottest day

!Epic Tomorrows

By Tadzio Mueller; originally published in German on the blog Peaceful Sabotage. Republished with permission.

Dear people,

It’s Saturday, June 27th, 6:27 a.m. I’m sitting in the kitchen, a small pot of green tea beside me, my laptop on my lap, writing these lines. This isn’t my usual routine; when I work on a Saturday, I usually don’t start until 10 a.m., after I’ve had a bit of a lie-in and finished reading the morning paper in bed. But today is supposed to be one of the hottest days in Germany since records began. Yesterday, a weather station in Saarbrücken recorded 41.3 degrees Celsius, the highest temperature ever measured. Today, this record will likely be broken; 39 degrees Celsius is forecast for this afternoon in Berlin, the highest temperature I’ve ever experienced in Germany. Neither my office nor our apartment has air conditioning, and I’m under pressure to finish this book, so here I am at 6:46 a.m., already hard at work, because it will simply be too hot from midday onward. It will be too hot to work, too hot to think, too hot to tell stories. It will simply be too hot for everything. End of June. In northern Germany, not in Ecuador.

And this heat wave is just the beginning. The world’s oceans are warmer than ever before, or at least not within the context of a stable, human-friendly climate. In the Pacific, the “Godzilla El Niño” is gaining momentum, and in the North Atlantic, the “cold blob” is causing alarm, already influencing the monsoon in India and representing the first clearly visible sign of the coming collapse of the AMOC, which will one day trigger a climate catastrophe of its own in Europe. When? We don’t know, but the date is getting closer and closer since I started reading the studies on the subject.

It’s the last weekend in June, normally a weekend packed with festivals, Pride marches, village celebrations, and whatnot – and news is pouring in from all over Germany that most of them are being canceled this weekend. My good friend and fellow collapse enthusiast Scully wanted to go to the Christopher Street Day (CSD) in Ilmenau: canceled because of the heat; I had considered going to the CSD in Bernau with Wolf, like Scully, to make sure there were more of us there than potentially disruptive fascists: canceled because of the heat.

Yesterday, the hottest day in Germany since records began, roads collapsed, people died, and Berlin felt like a ghost town; nobody wanted to be outside, nobody wanted to be in the sun. About an hour north of Berlin, the left-wing alternative music festival Fusion is taking place this weekend, as it always does at the end of June. Around 50,000 hedonistic holiday communists are partying there exuberantly for several days, a significant number of them drunk, stoned, or high on amphetamines. I myself spent many a sleepless night there in my younger days. For several years now, I haven’t gone to Fusion myself, but every year when I’m not there, I experience FOMO, or ” fear of missing out .” Someone else might be having more fun than me.

This year I’m not worried about missing out. This year I’m worried that people will collapse there in droves, possibly even die of heatstroke. I’ve read *The Heat Will Kill You First * and * Ministry for the Future *; I know how, in extreme heat, our bodies dissolve in on themselves, how our insides turn to scrambled eggs. I’m afraid of the heat, and this year it will reach up to 40 degrees Celsius at Fusion. I’m afraid that people will simply die a miserable death while partying because, as a society, we’re just not prepared to live in *Hothouse Earth *, as an influential paper described it a few years ago.

It’s Saturday, June 27th, 6:28 a.m. Today will likely be the hottest day in Germany since records began. And tomorrow the record might be broken again. As the well-known meteorologist Özden Terli reminded us in yesterday evening’s news: we are emitting more greenhouse gases, not less, and as I predicted a few years ago, the more the climate catastrophe escalates, the less we care about climate protection.

It’s Saturday, June 27th, 6:29 a.m., and the last report on Deutschlandfunk radio before the 6:30 news is about the lack of civil defense in Germany. I didn’t hear everything; it’s still early, and I’m just making my green tea. A middle-aged man is asked when he last experienced a siren alarm: he replies that it must have been quite a while ago, perhaps 40 years? I promise myself I’ll listen to this report again later; maybe I’ll find a few more good quotes in it.

Quotes that are supposed to prove something? That I woke up on June 27th in a different world than the one I described in the last chapter. A world where “disaster preparedness” is something to be ridiculed, something to be dismissed as “fascist prepperism” with all the self-assurance of those who have never had to react to a disaster themselves. A world where it’s becoming increasingly clear: disasters are coming, in fact, they’re already here. You can prepare, or you can’t—but if you don’t, then things are going to go wrong.

June 27, 2026, is one of the few days I’ve experienced that truly feels like this: like a world on the brink of collapse. A world where everything is falling apart. A world that, in a crucial sense, is coming to an end. And this is casting its shadows. Shadows that many are still ignoring. But the exciting and dangerous thing about heat is: it’s hard to ignore, and expensive. So we now have a brief window in which we’ll talk about heat waves, climate collapse, and civil protection. The window will close again quickly because of our society’s tendency to deny the truth. But perhaps it will stay open long enough for me to finish my book about collapse and preparing for collapse. Cognitively, that would be stupid, because heat makes you stupid. But symbolically, it would fit. And stories are all about symbols. So here we go : the world is ending, this book will soon be too, let’s wrap it up, people.

With diligent but heat-worried greetings,

Yours truly, Tadzio

DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, Exclusive to COTW, Letters to the editors, Popular & established authors, South Korea

Letter from Jo Eun Young to Matthew, COTW editor

!Epic Tomorrows

Dear Matthew,

I hope you have been doing well.

After returning from Europe, I took about a week to recover from jet lag and regain my energy.

For this journey, I printed fifty copies of our leaflet, and I was able to leave forty-eight of them at bookshops along the way.

My first stop was the conference in Siena, where I shared the leaflet with professors and several students in Korean Studies. They were genuinely interested, especially in the translations, and I promised to send them the original Korean poems after returning home.

After Siena, I visited Florence and Rome. The experience was quite different from my visit to Lisbon in 2019.

In Lisbon, I felt warmly welcomed. Perhaps it was because Fernando Pessoa is celebrated throughout the city, with bookstores and shops proudly displaying books and souvenirs inspired by him. It felt like a city that embraces its poets.

Florence and Rome, however, felt different. After returning home, I found myself reflecting on why.

First, Florence and Rome are much more tourism-oriented cities than Lisbon. Perhaps people naturally saw me as a tourist rather than as a writer.

Second, I wondered whether my limited English, together with being an Asian visitor, made communication more difficult.

Third, many of the bookshops I visited also operated as cafés, restaurants, or bars, which may have made it less practical for them to introduce or display independent literary projects.

Because the leaflet was written in English, one bookseller—who I believe was probably a staff member rather than the owner—suggested that I should instead visit bookshops specializing in English-language books.

In Florence, every bookshop kindly accepted my leaflet. In Rome, one bookshop politely declined. It appeared to be one of the busiest bookstores in the neighborhood, and the staff explained that any decision to display printed materials had to be discussed and approved at a staff meeting.

I cannot say that I was enthusiastically welcomed everywhere, but I also realize that this expectation was my own. If even one person becomes interested and a genuine connection begins, I will consider this journey worthwhile.

Most importantly, this small adventure was meaningful because I was able to share a leaflet that we created together—you, the illustrator Han So-jin, and I. Thanks to this project, I wandered far beyond the usual tourist destinations and explored the small streets and independent bookshops of Florence and Rome.

Back in Korea, I am currently teaching as a professor while also working with a local cultural foundation on a project interviewing independent neighborhood bookshops. Looking back, from March through August, I have been on a continuous journey through local bookshops in both Korea and Europe.

Thank you, Matthew, for accompanying me on this journey through your work and encouragement.

Now many projects are waiting for me again.

I hope to spend this summer working, reading, writing, and loving.

With my sincere gratitude,

JO EUN YOUNG

P.S.

I’ve been documenting this journey on my Instagram (@bella_joeun), if you’re interested.

DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, Exclusive to COTW, India, Scotland

Body Maps

!Epic Tomorrows

By Sreenithi

I loved walking through Edinburgh Old Town, up and down the Mile from crag to castle. I loved walking through Holyrood Park and sitting by the lake. It was called St Margaret’s Loch, and you could spot an entire fleet of swans on the water, looking stately and proud. I was terrified of them though. At close range, you could really see why birds are the last living dinosaurs. But I digress.

Having lived most of my life in the busy, metropolitan Bangalore, I was not used to the idea of walkable cities. Perhaps that is a uniquely European indulgence, making it a great tourist selling point. Bangalore is too big…and too chaotic to be walkable. Need I even mention the hellscape of road traffic that could easily consume your daily commute? 

It wasn’t as though I was out and about every day. Much to my shame, I barely knew my way around my hometown. I mostly stayed indoors, sitting and stewing in my own thoughts and dysfunction. Suspended in grief for over ten years without even realizing it, there was no real sense of normalcy. My family was paralysed too, frozen, and barely getting through each day. I hated being at home, but I struggled to get away.

I didn’t go out for walks. I didn’t learn how to ride a scooty or bike like the other kids to give myself that independence. I didn’t join extra-curriculars or explore sports. The only way I managed to prolong my ‘outside time’ was to hang out with my friends after class. But not for too long, because then I would have to worry about getting back home late, relying solely on unreliable public transport or a known auto uncle from my neighbourhood. Sometimes if I was lucky, a friend would drop me home on his bike.

The thing was, I wanted to get away from home, but I hated going outside. Because I hated myself. I hated my face and my body and my hair and my clothes. I wanted so badly to be seen but I didn’t want to be perceived. But there was something more insidious: I was stuck in debilitating survival mode. The poor city planning and waste management, the collective disregard for traffic rules, the noise and pollution, the fragile bubble of safety (if you’re a girl) – all these were navigable if you had the resourcefulness and a can-do attitude. ‘India is not for beginners’ as the meme goes. You just learn to deal with it as you go, to embody the chaos yourself.

But I was too incapacitated. Too broken and grief-stricken to be a proactive go-getter. Which is why moving countries for my master’s degree was quite a seismic shift. It meant that movement was no longer optional. But it was also no longer hindered. The easy, serene, walkable streets of Edinburgh were an essential scaffolding to get me out of my own head. For the first time in my life, I was going outside on my own terms…every single day. And I loved it! 

Edinburgh was so beautiful to experience. I couldn’t get enough of it. I learned everything I could about this quaint, historic little city. The closes and wynds, the undulating lanes, the view of the hills, the faint speck of sea in the distance, and the perpetual grey sky, all these became etched in my mind’s eye. This was the right place for me – not too big to overwhelm, not too small to suffocate. It was the perfect size to hold fully in my heart. It was the first place that I fell in love with, the first that I chose as home.

But for whatever reason, my journey there was constantly turbulent. For one, I moved house over eight times in a span of just three years. Not to sound too superstitious, but it felt like the city would simply not let me settle. ‘You will not find success here,’ someone at a party said to me once as she did all of our horoscopes. Not too long before that, my childhood grief had burst out of me, delaying my career and jump-starting the healing process rather violently. 

My first job was terrible. I felt so poorly treated that I quit in just four months and I have been unemployed ever since. Perhaps I shouldn’t have visited the castle at the start of my course. But how could I have known? Nobody told me it was bad luck to go there before graduating. There were days when I walked down the streets, sat in buses and parks, crying bitterly, baring my ugly tears to the city. There was even a time when I broke down inside a church, and I am not the religious kind. But things only got progressively worse. It was part of the recovery, but it left me so hollow.

And yet I loved this city to bits. Vehemently. The thought of leaving was agonising. 

‘Why do you even want to stay when this place is not serving you?’ a friend asked me.

‘Maybe you’re not meant to be here, maybe something better is coming,’ said another.

I was told well-intentioned things like this all the time as I resisted the prospect of leaving. How could I even begin to explain that it was as simple as wanting to walk up and down the streets? Not any street, but Edinburgh streets, and the closes, because they had become the rugged topography of my newfound agency. How could I explain that it was as simple as loving the old, gothic buildings and the sound of bagpipes sneaking up on me from around the tourist-heavy corner?

I didn’t just fall in love with the fantasy of this city, I loved it to its bones and grimy underbelly (yes, the Fringe venue too). Sometimes I close my eyes, and I can see it all so clearly. Vivid little snapshots, as though I never left. Usually, it is a flash of the road starting outside Waverly mall, sloping down to meet the small intersection on Market Street before opening into Cockburn Street and curving upwards. I don’t know why this is the chosen snapshot. But then I open my eyes again, and it is like I was never even there. Like a faint afterimage from another time and consciousness.

I am now in the Netherlands, trapped once again inside a visa deadline which is fast approaching. The city planning here is even more impressive. It is brighter, nicer, and the Dutch surely love their flowers. Perhaps I learned to contain my attachments. Or it is just a natural consequence of growing older. But I don’t feel the same magic. I like Holland but the experience has been somewhat flat (no pun intended). Could it be that I am more well-adjusted now? Or too numb?

But how nice it is to be here! The clean air and the easy, walkable roads. This permission to exist so naturally and freely in public space, something I cannot quite experience in Bangalore. At least not without effort and privilege. Sometimes, it really is as simple as wanting to hold onto the material comfort of a place. Don’t fault a migrant for their superficial goals, I guess.

I miss Edinburgh Old Town and Holyrood Park. 

I miss the agency that warmed my legs as I walked back to my flat, late, on a cold winter night.

I miss the person that I used to be walking up and down those hilly streets.

It was a place where I felt like myself.

It was home.