Non-stop rain…

Thursday afternoon, April 2 at 4:00 PM: a memorable moment has taken place. The rain has finally stopped and the sun is trying to break through again.

We have had non-stop rain for the past two days. Roads were flooded and impassable; the farmlands look like the floodplains I used to see near my hometown whenever the IJssel overflowed its banks. Add a night frost on top of that, and we could put on our skates. 

We were just able to walk back onto land for the first time. It was actually more like slipping and sliding. From a distance, I could already hear the water raging in the little canal at the back of the land. It has become a large, wild torrent, and we could almost go whitewater rafting on it.

Furthermore, natural ponds have spontaneously formed on land, where you can currently see tadpoles swimming. We don't have any dry hiking boots left, so we went for a walk in our boots this morning. We should have done that sooner. We came home with dry feet for the first time again. 

The roads are still in poor condition, with large puddles here and there. In some places, entire sections of asphalt have disappeared. That also makes driving so difficult, because when you drive through a puddle, you never know how deep it is or whether the road surface is still intact.

It reminds me a bit of driving a car during a winter sports trip when a blanket of snow has just fallen. On your guard, staying alert, and sometimes driving through the puddle with a blank stare and your brain switched off.

The infrastructure here in Italy is not designed for so much water at all, and if you saw the images of some highways on TV yesterday, they looked like complete rivers. 

The bad weather should be over by now, hopefully. We'll just have to wait and see. Coincidentally, I was just chatting with a friend from Senegal this afternoon – where it is currently 31 degrees – and we were talking about how one of the reasons people emigrate is often the beautiful weather at their destination.

For us, this reason no longer applies this winter. Fortunately, there are plenty of other reasons left, otherwise we might as well pack our bags again. 

All the trees have either budded by now or are in bloom. Even the trees I thought were dead. Only the walnut tree shows no signs of life yet. I think if the sun shines on it for a moment one of these days, it will become a magnificent display of blossoms.

So off to bed early tonight and hope that we wake up to sunshine again tomorrow.