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Its still found in travel guides for Eastern Europe: your hotel will be way too hot and there will be (probably) nothing you can do about it. That's nearly free

• scruffyherder 6y ago
  Soviet gas? It comes from a time machine?
  • carlmr 6y ago
    What's considered normal could have been dialed in during that time and still persist.
  • brnt 6y ago
    As sibling says, the best explanation I have found is that it's a holdover from Soviet natural gas politics (and in fact continued by Russian gas politics, as countries such as Ukraine can attest).
    • Dma54rhs 6y ago
      Now I don't know what the real issues were or are, but live in the old soviet block and the general understanding in my area is the heating systems were build badly, designed horribly. Of course the world at the time didn't know much about insulation either. So in order to satisfy the ones who had open walls aka no neighbours both sides, you had to push more hot water which made the ones living middle saunas. Also what floor you lived in, the pressure was never balanced. Radiators didn't usually have any control mechanism either and there was no real initiative to save. So people opened windows. I remember my father telling me that the windows were so poor quality where he used to live, it was smarter to isolate the radiators with tons of blankets instead. Wood with big cattle house was the main source of energy here. Now the systems are usually replaced and since energy costs so much more everywhere it's your wallet that dictates it not some bureaucrats.