It was in February 2012, when I wrote the coming texts of this book, on my laptop each morning in Bed from 5 to 9 o'clock.
One of my friends possesses a Rustico-House over the Lake of Lago Maggiore
We believed - as always when Swiss go down South - "Down There" in Italy Rome and the rest was sinking down in Snow and Ice when the coldest wave of frost since 25 years came over Europe .
And so we arrived at the chapel of a very little village, high up over the house, where a small path goes down like hell to the lake very far away in the counter-light. Looking at the start of the path, we found it was full of snow and ice and so I installed the Snow Chains on the front wheels of one of our two cars - and then the second car was left parked at the Chapel full of material for the house.
A friendly middle-aged Italian come over to our car, looked on our three dogs and wondered: "You want drive by car down to your village? This is completely nuts. One of your friends went down the path some days ago to his cottage and flew off the street. Just don't try and go on foot."
My girl-friend talking Italian answered: "We can impossibly carry all our stuff down on foot. At least the car with the snow chains must go down. We try and after some days, the sun shall come and melt away all snow and let us get up again." The Italian did not quite understand our point of view and we learnt later that not the car of our friends went down from the street, but the lorry with his snow plug and it required half a day of work and 3 tracked vehicles to get that thing up again to the upper village.
Slowly we drove the very steep way down, attending any moment to go down to hell, but all went best half the way down - but then the plug hadn't gone further and it became utterly impossible to continue. And so we went several times down on foot to our cottage, to bring all material and the dogs in our Rustico.
Inside the house it was about zero degree. First we started the oil heating and found that in the tank were left some 400 litres of oil, just enough for 2 weeks of heating. Then we found that our source was frozen and we had to live without water, For days, we carried water to the house in great kettles. Then all Cheminees and wood stoves we heated up like hell and near the fire, the air got really very hot. My woman could use for her cooking some wood cooking-stove - for preparing our meals and getting warm water for all kinds of reasons.
But the first night, we risked to wake up frozen in our beds and only hot-water bottles prevented such a disaster. Even the dogs tried to come under the blankets. But after some days, the house got warmer and warmer. And each time we went in the land and for shopping or visiting some of the Circolo Ristorantes, we had to climb up to the upper car, since it proved impossible to move the one with the Snow chains back up the hill again.
We were lucky enough having still electricity and could watch in the evening the TV programs are some DVD. However, the terrible storm had in our absence let explode a huge summer tent we had aside the Rustico. Maria, our Italian farmer women possessing a very little house nearby, told us that a Tourbillon never seen before in her life has come and carried the whole huge Tent with all furniture and table and lamps inside through the air some 50 meters away - and they needed some hours to put the hole rotten tent on one heap aside our house, for reasons of insurance or trying to build it up again in springtime.
The sun was shining each new day and Europe was left in frozen state, the situation did not ameliorate at all and so after some 20 texts written on my laptop and beautiful adventures with our dogs, without water and without a warm house, we carried with our rucksacks some required things up the hill, left the one car with the snow-chains just back in Italy, forced ourselves up to the chapel and drove back home to Switzerland.
And be sure that exactly these 10 days down there over the Lago Maggiore was one of my greatest adventures in life, some feeling to be back as troglodyte, apart from the military service in my young years - but this is another story.
René Delavy - Berlin and Bournemouth
Written on February 17, 2012
