Thank you, gloken!

The heating thing always amazed me. When I lived in South Africa, the temperature would go down to -5C, no heat, 'air bricks' in every room so even if there were some insulation it would do no good, and people told me that of course there was no central heat, "because we really don't need it, do we?"

I had an apartment for a while that had a bath but no shower, and developed this whole routine where I rolled out of bed into my robe and slippers, ran into the bath and started to fill the tub with hot water, shut the door, and huddled under the covers with my eye on the clock. I ran in to shut off the water at the exact minute it got to the desired height, shut the door behind me, and bathed in a nice warm room.