Stuck in the snow?

When we first visited our house on the hill we asked Eleonora, the real estate agent, if it often snowed in this valley (did you know the climate can change a lot from one valley to another in Italy?). She told us it did snow a little every year, but not much, and it was always gone in a few days.

So when we woke up on the 28th of November 2008 we were in for a big shock: more than 50 cm of snow had fallen overnight. Of course we weren’t prepared, we didn’t even have a snow shovel. I can assure you it was not easy to go to the outdoor toilet that morning and I didn’t even think about taking an (outdoor) shower.

Luckily we soon received a call that somebody would come to clean our road and our builder promised the snow would not stop them either from going forward with the renovation works.

We were lucky to have them, because it seemed like every time the snow melted a bit, a new batch of snow fell out of the sky.  We ended up being surrounded by a snowy fairytale landscape for at least 2 months.

PS. Side note about road cleaning in Italy.  The municipality cleans all the municipal roads, but not the private ones or those owned by consortia (groups of owners). For us this means that when it snows the road gets cleaned to a certain point by the municipality, and we have to do the rest ourselves or pay somebody to do this for us. As they’ve always been super supporting of us and our touristic activity (the only one in Merana) they have moved the point were the road becomes private to the border of our land, which means we have no road cleaning costs anymore and we’re never stuck on our hill.