When Texas Checked on Munich
Lessons from an Unexpected Email, a Stubborn Dachshund, and Staying Cool During a Heat Wave
The past few days have certainly been memorable. Munich has been in the grip of an intense summer heat wave, and at the same time I've been spending long hours in what I affectionately call my "fitness job"—the perfect counterbalance to the countless hours I spend sitting in front of a laptop.
Right in the middle of all this, an email popped into my inbox from my longtime colleague and good friend Tim in Texas.
"Howdy Thomas... I've been reading about the insane heat wave hitting Europe right now. Those temperatures in Germany and France are so crazy hot — 40+ degrees. Here in Texas we're actually having one of those unusually rainy years. The humidity is terrible. I hope you and your family are keeping cool."
I couldn't help but smile.
Here was Tim—a Texan—checking on me because of the heat in Bavaria.
There was something wonderfully ironic about that. After all, when most people think of extreme summer heat, Texas usually comes to mind long before Munich.
Tim and I spent many years working together aboard an offshore drilling vessel. Twelve-hour shifts. Two months at sea. No land in sight. Experiences like that stay with you for life.
Tim was my favorite foreman. One day he walked over, grabbed me by the shoulders with a grin, gently pushed me into a chair and barked in his unmistakable Texas style:
"Thomas, sit down! I timed you. You haven't been sitting for even thirty seconds today!"
That was more than fifteen years ago. Apparently, not much has changed. I've never been particularly good at sitting still.
Something else many people don't know is that Tim was actually born in Hof, a small town in northern Bavaria. His father served as a pilot in the U.S. Navy. Life has a curious way of connecting places that seem worlds apart, and somehow Texas and Bavaria have crossed paths more than once in my own journey.
So I was happy to reassure Tim that I can still handle long days of physically demanding work—even during unusually hot summer weather—with much the same enthusiasm I had back on the open ocean. Experience certainly helps. Learning how to pace yourself is part of it. And so is staying well hydrated.
My years offshore taught me something that has stayed with me ever since: if you expect your body to perform under demanding conditions, you have to take good care of it. During many of our expeditions, the only drinking water available on board was desalinated water. After spending weeks at sea, I repeatedly noticed that I felt different than I did on land. That simple observation sparked a question that has stayed with me ever since:
What role does proper hydration really play in our well-being and physical performance?
By then, staying well hydrated had already become part of my daily routine, but those offshore experiences made me even more curious. I wanted to understand why I noticed such a difference. That curiosity eventually led me in several unexpected directions.
I was first introduced to the concept of so-called structured water through Japanese and South Korean colleagues. A few years later, while working in Norway, I had the opportunity to examine the properties of natural spring water and glacier water at their source using a few simple measurement techniques. (I'll link to that earlier blog below for anyone who is interested.)
Some of the most fascinating conversations, however, took place back on the drilling vessel. One of my colleagues—a brilliant Russian nuclear physicist and electrical engineer—shared his perspective on how flowing water may develop certain characteristics in natural environments and why this subject has attracted scientific interest in different parts of the world for decades.
How much of these various ideas will ultimately stand the test of scientific scrutiny remains an open question, and there are differing viewpoints on many aspects of the topic.
What I can say with confidence is much simpler: over many years, I have found that making hydration a consistent part of my daily routine has helped me stay active, resilient, and remarkably comfortable—even during unusually hot days like the ones we've just experienced here in Munich.
I found myself smiling more than once during what I jokingly call the “Texas heat wave in Munich.” To be honest, the situation here was never quite as dramatic as some headlines suggested—or as the slightly exaggerated impression this article might give at first glance.
What concerns me far more than the heat itself, however, is something else entirely: the growing amount of plastic waste in our environment. That is a problem we are still (or rather: more and more) struggling to get under control.
Our dachshund Walter—a stubborn little Gaul in spirit and accordingly one of the most determined members of the household—turned out to be the most sensible of us all during the heat wave. He stepped outside reluctantly, walked a few meters, then made a firm executive decision that the sofa was clearly the superior environment.
No debate. No negotiation. Just a quiet acceptance of reality. Walter does not argue with nature. He simply adapts to it. A surprisingly wise little creature...
After a long day of physical work in my “fitness job,” I sometimes come home, take a breath, and realize that I’ve made it through another hot and demanding day.
And I occasionally think to myself:
“Not too bad for someone over sixty.”
And I am genuinely grateful for that.
But perhaps the real secret is not a single factor at all.
Maybe staying healthy is simply the result of many small habits that accumulate over time:
Good breathing
Enough water
Staying in motion
Sufficient sleep
Staying curious and continuing to learn
Gratitude—the more the better
In the end, it often turned out: doesn’t take much to get through life surprisingly well.
Conclusion
Looking back over the past forty years, I realize more and more that the most valuable things I’ve learned were rarely found in textbooks.
They came from conversations with colleagues from all over the world. From working on offshore drilling vessels in the middle of the ocean. From hiking through the mountains of Europe and South America. From standing at the edges of Norwegian glaciers. From spending time under the sun in Hawaii and California. From observing marine life beneath the surface of the world’s oceans. From ordinary hot summer days in Munich. And certainly from walking our dachshund Walter through the neighborhoods and nature near-by our various home locations over the years.
And perhaps that is one of the quiet privileges of getting older.
You don’t just collect years.
You collect encounters.
Conversations.
Experiences.
Small habits that, over time, can have surprisingly large effects.
And at some point, you begin to notice that all these seemingly separate threads form a surprisingly coherent picture. Maybe that picture was there all along—we simply learn to recognize it more clearly over time.
This is what I understand by “Free Wellness for Everyone”:
No fixed formula. No miracle solution.
Just experiences worth receiving—and worth passing on.
Many of the most effective things in life cost surprisingly little.
Nature—and life itself—offer them freely.
We simply need to stay curious enough to notice them.
And as for the next heat wave? - It is more than welcome. Walter and I will be ready.
With a warm Aloha, a hearty Servus, and a robust Bavarian “Prost!” from Munich.
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