The Weather

It's either feast or famine here in Salzburg. When the weather is fine, it's spectacular. When the weather is bad, it's horrible. There's very little middle ground. It's either wonderful or wretched.
I think today we discovered new dimensions of wretched. They are predicting vast quantities of snow for the weekend.... just in time for the opening of the Christmas markets. The Alt Stadt and the bridges are all festooned with twinkle lights. There's only one thing dampening the holiday cheer. Cold gloomy rainy weather.
In anticipation of the weekend snow accumulations I went to the local big box shoe store "Jello" in search of boots.Now what in the world does gelatin have to do with footgear? Very little actually. I had to remind myself that the J in German sounds like Y and therefore the store's name is more like "Yellow."
I will digress momentarily here to point out that while most business is conducted in small locally owned businesses, the big corporations are starting to creep into the city. For good or for ill, McDonald's has now firmly ensconced itself on Getreidegasse as has H&M and Zara. Getreidegasse is the main drag of the old city and is the address of Mozart's birth house. The most recent "big box" store opened on Alpenstrasse in August. That would be the "Erotik Markt", the Wal-Mart of leather, lace and other things better left to the imagination. It is quite controversial to say the least....
Back to Jello. I had just found the perfect pair of boots (cute, stylish and inexpensive) when I looked out the window only to see that it was pitch black outside at 2 in the afternoon. It gets dark here early (around 4) to be sure, but this was unusual. There was a loud clap of thunder and it started to pour BUCKETS!! After a few minutes, the rain changed to snow. Heavy-wet -stuff-that-accumulates-on-the-windshield-wipers snow. Wow!! I made a compound word worthy of German! It continued to thunder with some lightning PLUS rain PLUS snow PLUS hail. It was everything imaginable all at once!! Really wretched! Umbrellas were rendered useless!
In theory I will wake up tomorrow to 3+ inches of snow on the ground. We'll see....