Time was, the hotter it got the happier I got. Those days are long gone, and have been for some time. After five-plus years living in Sweden, I’m miserable in any temperatures above 25°C (77°F). As I type this, it’s 26°C in Olof’s office. Ergo, I’m miserable.

I can trace much of my heat-intolerance back to four particular days in 2003. Olof’s company’s annual meeting was in Budapest that year, and I decided to tag along with Lydia and Tage. (Sidebar: Back then families were invited/included in the yearly meetings; as the company has grown, that policy has changed. The year after the change, the annual meeting was held in Cancún, in spring-break season. Coincidence? You be the judge.) That year summer came unusually early to Hungary, and it was blisteringly hot. In the first week of May, temperatures were soaring close to 40°C (~100°F). We had enough sense to pack for warmer temperatures than what we had at home, but it was still the tail-end of winter here–we were getting daily highs of 10°C (50°F)–so “warm-weather dress” meant jeans and t-shirts to us. Oh, what fools we were.

Though I had always wanted to visit Budapest, and I did enjoy parts of the trip, my most vivid memories of those few days involve the inescapable, suffocating heat. I swear, I was never so glad to leave a place in my life than I was to leave Budapest at the end of that long weekend. It was such a relief when we got to Stockholm to hear Swedish spoken all around me instead of the riddle that is Hungarian (by and large, Hungarians speak no English and even in tourist areas, signs in English are few and far between), and it was an even bigger relief to get off the plane up here in northern Sweden and walk into near-freezing temperatures.

Since then, I’ve had a very low tolerance for hot weather, and whenever I feel the hot sun beating directly on me I get an almost panicky feeling. I’m all about shade and cool breezes now. Apparently I suffered a lasting trauma in Budapest, and my days as a summertime girl are over.