San Marino - the World's oldest republic!

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San Marino is another of the world’s micro-states. Like Liechtenstein, Andorra, the Vatican and Monaco, it exists in a bizarre state of independence, issuing its own stamps, having its own government and even possessing its own army, even though in all but name it is part of another country – in this case, Italy. San Marino is surrounded by Italy, and the people who live there speak Italian, spend the same currency (the euro) and travel between both nations as if no border exists.

According to legend, a Croatian stonemason called Marinus founded San Marino in the year 301. Marinus was a committed Christian who, to escape persecution in his homeland, sailed to Italy and settled in the Italian town of Rimini. There he downed his hammers and chisels and became a priest, rising to the rank of bishop. But trouble was just around the corner for Marinus. It came in the form of an insane woman who claimed that the bishop was her husband. No one believed it, of course, but the woman’s constant hounding sent Marinus running to the hills. Literally. He built himself a chapel on top of Mount Titanus, and some people followed him; before he knew it, a community developed. By the ninth century, San Marino became an official city state, and, due to its relative inaccessibility, on top of a mountain, and the fact that it was hardly a political or economic heavyweight anyway, the country managed to cling onto independence while other city states (the Republic of Venice and the Republic of Genoa, most notably) became incorporated into Italy.

Getting to the fifth-smallest country in the world was more difficult than I thought it would be. First, I had to fly to Copenhagen, and wait for four hours before boarding another SAS flight to the Italian city of Bologna. From Bologna airport, I caught a bus into town and booked myself into the hotel nearest to the central train station. After that, I grabbed a slice of pizza and a couple of beers and then went to bed. It had been a long day.

The next morning was pleasantly sunny – an ideal day for visiting a new country. It was also freezing, and so I grabbed a warming coffee and crossed the road to the train station. After securing my first class return ticket to the coastal town of Rimini (it was only a few euros more than the second class ticket), I sat on the platform and waited.

I knew next to nothing about San Marino, except that it had an international football team and a Formula 1 racing circuit. I also knew that the race circuit was not actually in San Marino, but in Italy. A movement to my left attracted my attention. It was a couple of obese people attacking a platform vending machine. The woman was jabbing her finger on the part that returned coins while her partner, a large man with a backpack, shook the machine, his breath spilling out like an enraged beast. Back and forth it rocked, but it would not offer any chocolate, sweets or crisps. The man bellowed and shook it again while his companion glared and breathed fire. But it was no use: breakfast would not be served that morning.

Ten minutes later, a train pulled up at the platform. All around, people were furiously puffing on cigarettes. It was as if the last hour of the cigarette smoker had been declared, and the platform was thick with smoke. I sidestepped the smokers and found my first-class seat: number 13. It wasn’t as luxurious as I’d hoped, but at least it was comfortable and there was nobody sitting next to me. I settled back for the hour’s journey to Rimini.

Opposite me sat a middle-aged couple. As we set off, I caught the man’s eye and nodded. He returned the gesture and then looked out of the window. I did too, staring blankly at the graffiti and the buildings beyond.

Bologna was supposedly a beautiful city, the seventh largest in Italy no less, but all I could see was ugly concrete and nothing much else. A few minutes later, the train lurched to a stop at a small station. A few passengers boarded, including an elderly Italian gentleman. The man was angry and the source of his ire was me.

“Stupido idiota!” the man hissed, causing people to look. The friendly couple opposite looked shocked. The pensioner, who looked remarkably like the man on the front of Dolmio jars, carried on ranting in thick Italian.

I raised my hands at the sudden outburst. “I can’t understand what you’re saying. Can you speak English?”

The man sneered and let rip again. I was now the centre of attention in the whole carriage. First class it may have been, but with an Englishman on board, it had been reduced to a chav estate. I didn’t know what to do, barring throwing myself (or him) out of the window, and so I showed the old man my ticket, pointing at the number 13. This brought a fresh wave of abuse in my direction.

“Please stop,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re saying. Unless you can speak English, I suggest you sit in this seat.” I gestured to the seat empty next to me. The man looked and then unleashed another wave of volatile Italian. It was as if I had smeared his homestead in excrement and then had kicked his pet dog in the eye. The whole scene was ridiculous to the extreme.

“Excuse me,” said a voice to my left. It belonged to a man in a suit. “I’m afraid you are sitting in this man’s seat. Seat 13 is an aisle seat. You are in number 12.”

I looked at my ticket and then at the overhead graphic showing which seat was which. I sighed. So I was in the wrong. I stood up and moved out into the aisle, allowing my tormentor to squeeze by. As he did so, the man in the suit gave me a pained expression, as if to say, ‘Sorry about this.’ As for the old swine, he was as snug as a git in a pile of horse manure. He’d beaten the foreigner into submission and was now wallowing in the window seat of his glory.

Rimini was less than thrilling out of season, but then again, I only saw the area around the train station. Pigeons ruled the rafters while white camper vans ruled the roads and parking spaces. I milled around for a bit, hovering near a Burger King, then grew bored so walked around the block, hands thrust into my pockets. There wasn’t much to see, so I returned to the front of Burger King to wait for the bus. It wasn’t due to arrive for another thirty minutes so I bought a coffee, more to warm my hands than anything.

Other passengers arrived, all foreigners by the sound of them. There was a trio of young Russian girls, all lipstick and high heels, a couple of Chinese women and a lone middle-aged Japanese man. Then a group of middle-aged Germans arrived. The bus was going to be full of international passengers.

Five minutes late, the modern San Marino bus pulled up and we all boarded. Nine euros for a round trip up a mountain and back seemed like good value, and soon we were heading through the outskirts of Rimini, passing Tamoil petrol stations and empty vineyards. At one point, close to the San Marino border, we passed a collection of planes perched on a hilltop. An old jet fighter, a small turboprop passenger aircraft, a helicopter and what looked like a World War One biplane were all sitting on the side of the hill. A large sign read Museo dell’Aviazione. I stared at the planes, wondering how on earth the owners had got them up there.

As expected, crossing the border between Italy and San Marino was a simple matter of driving along a road. There was no border as such, and the only reason I knew we had crossed was because of a sign saying San Marino. Up in the distance, almost in silhouette, were the cliff-top castles of San Marino City, the capital of the tiny nation. They stood upon Mount Titano, and to get there we had to pass through San Marino’s biggest town – Dogana, home of large shopping centres and something called the Medieval Store, which was full to the brim with broadswords, axes and metal knight costumes.

I quickly surmised that San Marino was identical in almost every way to Italy. The only difference was the distinctive blue and white car number plates. I sat back as we traversed a series of hairpin bends towards our goal. The coach dropped us off in a large car park, flanked by a high stone wall at one end and a set of gift shops at the other. There were seven or eight empty coaches already parked, and, as we climbed out, a tourist train snaked its way around the corner. Christmas music was blaring from its speakers.

A lot of tourists were standing outside the shops. I wandered over to them, noticing the middle-aged Japanese man was already hot-footing it up some steps to the main part of town. He looked like a man on a mission. The shops were selling key rings, chocolate bars, flags and bottles of Titanbrau, San Marino’s national beer. The displays showed lots of Cyrillic, an indicator of how many Russians visited the nation. I decided to follow the lead of the Japanese man and climbed the steps. At the top was another steep path, which opened into a shopping arcade. The man was nowhere to be seen, and so I wandered around the cafes, bars and gun shops. Yes, gun shops. I was shocked to learn San Marino had the most relaxed gun laws in Europe, meaning submachine guns, revolvers and all sorts of pistols could be purchased, as could a vast array of knives and crossbows. Why anyone would want to purchase such weaponry was beyond me, but every gunsmith was packed.

I walked to a high wall and looked out across the landscape. Beyond a nearby church spire was a rolling series of peaks and valleys, some shrouded in mist. It was a scene befitting a dragon. As if on cue, I heard a woman cackling. It was coming from above so I turned around to see. On another high-turreted wall, ten or twelve people were gazing downwards. None looked like a witch, but then I heard it again – a high-pitched, authentically accurate, hag-like cackle. And then I spotted her. It was a woman with blonde hair. She was looking directly at me, or at least I thought so. Then she was gone.

I decided to search out the torture museum. My guidebook suggested that San Marino’s torture museum was supposed to be rather good, featuring a whole range of historical torture equipment. I ambled around the winding streets of the town for a while, hoping to stumble across it, and, after wandering past even more gun shops, I finally spied a sign saying Museo Delle Cere Strumenti Tortura 30m, and, underneath, Not to be missed!

I found the entrance and paid my seven euros in eager anticipation.

In Bratislava, capital of Slovakia, I’d visited a torture museum. I’d been horrified at some of the implements on show, and then mesmerised by some of the gruesome pictures. I was expecting more of the same inside San Marino’s torture museum, but soon came to realise that I would be sorely disappointed. For a start, the vast majority of the waxworks on offer were not being tortured. Instead, they were poor representations of famous people in totally unconvincing poses: Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon Bonaparte, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler and plenty of other people I didn’t know stood inside darkened rooms. I sped past them, hoping to come across something more interesting.

Around a corner, I came across a waxwork of a man being hanged. Finally a bit of the good stuff. I peered at the figure closely, noticing he looked like a shop mannequin. Someone had flopped a shiny black wig over his head, dressed him in historic clothes and then placed him in a noose. It was a pathetic attempt at terror, and I wasn’t surprised I was the only person inside the museum.

In another display, a man wearing red velvet trousers was sitting down while another man pressed a wooden beam down onto his knees. The beam had long nails sticking out of it, and I could well imagine the terrible pain they would have caused had they been real. But the waxwork victim’s expression was neutral, as was his torturer’s, which negated the effect somewhat. There was no agony or pain on the face, only a standard expression. In fact, all the waxworks in the whole museum seemed to have the same face, and I wondered whether they had obtained a job lot of store dolls and had simply dressed them up. It really was that bad. I left soon after, wondering how the guidebook had got it so wrong. As I passed the man who had sold me the ticket, I noticed he had the decency to look a little embarrassed.

San Marino was fairy-tale pretty. It was full of fortified stony walls, sky-reaching battlements and musicians wandering around playing festive tunes. I walked by stalls selling roasted chestnuts and fragrant-smelling mead until I came to one of the old towers. Dating from the eleventh century, it looked like something from a fantasy film. I could picture fair maidens and court jesters quivering inside its towers while fire-breathing dragons rumbled overhead.

“I’m not going to tell you again, Lucy,” said a voice belonging to an American woman. She was waiting for her sullen daughter to catch up with her and her husband. The girl, aged about ten, was walking ever-so-slowly, making a laborious show of moving one foot in front of the other. At the rate she was going, it would take her an hour to catch up with her mum.

“Move!” said mum, angrier now. “Walk properly.”

I passed the girl and mum. When I turned around a few metres ahead, I saw that mum was dragging the girl by her arm. San Marino, plainly, did not appeal to everyone.

I continued along the cliff top path known as the Witches’ Pass. It was called this, because once upon a time, suspected witches had been dragged along the trail to a point where they could be flung from the cliffs. I looked around to see if I could spot the cackling woman from earlier but soon realised the futility in this. There were just too many people. I did notice the Japanese man though. We nodded at each other as we passed: fellow solo travellers.

I found an open air bar and ordered a drink. With a view overlooking the landscape below (and the Adriatic in the far distance), I sipped on my 5.80 euro Titanbrau beer, shivered and pondered what to do next. I didn’t have time for much because the bus back to Rimini was leaving in forty minutes, so I looked at the thin pamphlet about San Marino that someone had left on the table. Inside, I read something annoying: San Marino had two torture museums! One was a state-sanctioned museum full of ancient torturing equipment, featuring over 100 devices including the skinning device, the heretics fork and the simple but effective knee-breaker. The other torture museum was the one I’d visited.

I looked at my watch, and wondered whether I’d have time to visit the decent torture museum. Probably not. Instead, I finished my drink and stopped briefly at the marble-clad Basilica di San Marino, which supposedly contained the relics of Marinus, the city-state’s founder. Then I loitered for a few minutes in a busy square dominated by the Palazzo Pubblico, the almost castle-like town hall. I took a photo of the huge Christmas tree opposite it and then made my way downhill toward the bus stops. The Japanese man was already there, as were the Chinese girls. Soon after, we were all sitting aboard the bus as it made its return journey to Rimini. After one more night in Bologna, I would be heading to the airport for my next port of call, where, if all went well, I’d be enjoying a pastry or two in Vienna.

If you have enjoyed reading this tale of my visit to San Marino, then maybe you'll enjoy the book it came from, Rapid Fire Europe: City Hopping in 22 Western European Countries. It's available in paperback and e-book from Amazon.

UK Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rapid-Fire-Europe-European-Countries-ebook/dp/B00MR3HZYC/ref=la_B00B75IKJA_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1408897624&sr=1-9

US Link: http://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Fire-Europe-European-Countries-ebook/dp/B00MR3HZYC/ref=la_B00B75IKJA_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415116428&sr=1-8

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