Italians on Snow: "The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling!!"

Because it has snowed, snowed, melted a bit then turned into ice overnight, snowed, been completely frigid, been so windy I thought my apartment would detach and travel to Oz, and snowed some more, I have not had the chance to have any fun adventures in the past two weeks. You know it's bad/unusual when Italy makes it on The Weather Channel top stories:

The Weather Channel on Italy's worst (and snowiest) winter in years
(For reference, it usually doesn't snow this much... ever... in Italy. Usually never in Rome.)


It also doesn't help that Italians don't believe in shoveling. There is a pick-up truck with salt in the flatbed which drives around and two guys get out to put salt down occasionally. So, once the snow melts a little bit, this is what sidewalks look like once the temperatures drop at night:

Oh, also, when a snowstorm hits, Italians act like it is the end of the world. Everything shuts down. Trains stop running, (clearly nobody drives because the roads are awful), and stores don't open. It's a bit ridiculous, and the reason why I haven't been able to leave Ferrara for two weeks now.

They also don't believe in digging out their cars until the last minute.

(about 3 days after the storm)

I guess because they don't like to clean their cars off in a timely manner, they do everything they can to prevent ice from forming. I've never seen this done before, but people put cardboard on their windshield to keep the ice off.

On a fun note! We had pasta making lessons Thursday night. We learned how to make capellacci from scratch.

Then we got to eat the biggest meal of my life--basically a 5 course meal, when you count bread and the apperitifs (with snacks) which we had beforehand. I even finally got to eat the traditional bread of Ferrara, coppia.

 

These are actually the miny ones. The regular ones usually look like this:

But the final product appearance tends to depend on the baker.

Course 1: salami

Course 2: real capellacci con zucca (pumpkin capellacci)

Course 3: some sort of meat dish (I think it was pork) with mushrooms and roasted potatoes

Course 4: dessert (a sort of really thin, not as gooey brownie).

The restaurant was in the super medieval section of town, so the walk home was kind of fun.

I am hoping for good weather next week because we are going to Venice for Carnevale on Saturday (with a possible trip to Cento for their Carnevale on Sunday if we can find the proper transportation). I don't know if they have a Carnevale celebration in Ferrara, but they do have these awesome pastries for the season. This one is a type of fried raisin dough with cream inside, topped with powdered sugar.