-Ralph-

I'm afraid coming from Italy your not going to be happy with the weather or the riding conditions in winter. What is just normal biking to us will seem like hell to you.

You can ride all year with good clothing, but you just don't know what the weather is going to do, summer or winter. You can get a wet day just as easily in summer as in winter and some lovely dry days in winter. The difference in winter is that the roads rarely dry out, they get wet every night with dew or frost. So you need to get used to riding slippy surfaces and having a filthy bike all the time. That filth by the way is salt used to keep the roads free of ice, so it rots your bike.

Sorry....