San Marino - The Oldest Republic

It's hard to believe that only an hour away from a tumultuous coastal town of Rimini lies hidden an entire country enclave on the Apennine mountain. "We are going up to the house of God," Alena makes a comment while we are squirming in our seats and peeking out of the windows to catch the breath-taking hilly landscape we left behind as our bus slowly zigzags its way into the world's oldest Republic.

The oldest country in the world. Wow! How many times in your life can you claim to have witnessed, visited or done something 'est' (largest, smallest...)? This is surreal. I didn’t imagine this kind of pleasant surprise given San Marino belongs to my crossout list, a list of countries I visit just for the sake of crossing them out from my Europe extravaganza. The surprise is partly attributed to the fact that I didn’t know anything at all about this country. This makes me think that every once in a while in our travel life, we should be as ignorant as possible about our imminent travel destination, no self-educated with the help of Internet searched images and travel guides. Instead embrace the unknown.

In the last few years, I have become infatuated with vivid, mismatched colors painted on houses and shops seen everywhere in the Czech Republic and in every European old towns. This colorful messiness is what contributes the undisputable charm of this old continent. Then, I should be disappointed by the single dominating shade of beige on every wall and door laid neatly like an array of cosmetic facial foundation. But, I was completely overtaken by the striking difference between this city and many others I had seen.

In contrast with the reserved, neutral tone of the ancient walls are bright designer bag and accessory shops dotted along every alleys. These bags have the nicest mixture of color and design.

San Marino is undoubtedly beautiful. But I suspect the physiology-psychology effect played a role as well. There is this "look-up" trick I’ve used often and sometimes advised my friends to do the same. The simple trick has works every time. When I sense the some kind of nervousness, anger or sadness from my friends, I ask them to look up. Some abide immediately; others hesitate thinking I intend to make them look stupid. I let them looking up to nothing specific for a while before revealing my experiment. By looking up, we change certain muscles on our face, changing the physiology, thus change our mental state. For example, when we smile, your mouth is stretched wider. This doesn’t mean when your mouth is stretched wider, you smile. However, if you deliberately stretch that muscles on end sides of your mouth, you forcefully put yourself in the stage of a smiley face, and when you’re in this induced positive stage, it’s more difficult to be sad or angry. What does this have anything to do with San Marino? This city is located on the mountain. From the moment the bus pulls into the parking lot, you have to climb many stairs to get to the entrance gate, then walk up to another layer of the town following narrow alleys in order to reach the three fortresses on the mountain top. You do look down, round and about but mostly you will look up. I had a tourist map on hand ready to examined but never felt the need use it. First, the city is small and isolated in a place of its own, so you can’t possibly stray away from it. Second, I lost interest in knowing which buildings and land marks mentioned in the guide book. The names of the oldest churches or the years when a special building was constructed are no longer relevant to me. These facts are useful to fill up a Wiki page but cease to mean any thing when it comes to understand a country. I wanted to see if I could see something more hidden.

The perfect weather enabled tourists and locals to roam the street and chill out in front of shops. Ancient and modern, conservative and hip blended themselves together to bring about a special aura about this tiny country. Like their Italian neighbors, San Marinese are friendly and enjoy life as if they are not bothered by the triviality that seemed to enshroud us all. They smiled, laughed, greeted passerby or just seemed happy. It has dawned on me that indeed people from Mediterranean climate know a secret about living life?

The old town is small, thus navigating is as simple as following small alleys lined with colorful shops, circling the squares and walking up until you reach the end of a fortified wall, and there you will see high towers atop. Hiking up to the stairs leading to one of the tower, I suddenly remembered my old days in school. I didn't enjoy school a lot if not at all because I could not relate bookish stuffs to the real world, not even a simple thing. I was taught that the sun rose in the east and set in the west. But seeing the sun in the evening could not induce me to conclude that direction was the West. Together with many subjects, history and geography were boring and time wasters, learning the 'what', 'when' and 'where.' Without the 'why' and 'how', it was impossible to make those theories and facts applicable. I knew a whole lot but at the same time knew nothing at all. When standing by the fortified wall facing the tower, looking down the city below, I recalled the bus trip from low-land Rimini to the mountain top. I had a strange hallelujah moment because I swear I could clearly picture in front of me the scenery which might have happened hundreds of years ago. I saw fleeing Christian San Marinese in medieval costumes on foot and horseback escaping to the mountain, settling in and defending themselves against the army of Roman Emperor Diocletian from Rimini. Three years exploring castles and fortresses in the Czech Republic definitely helped with this vivid visualization. Yes! Flocking to the nearest high mountain was the only logical way. There they could easily fortify themselves against the enemy. Attacking someone from above risked the chance of them spotting you first and easily strike back.

San Marinese probably succeeded otherwise their country would not be the oldest state today. Though small, it was never broken up and annexed by their superpower Italian neighbor. Though small in size, it has something else bigger. Although your dominion is small your state is nevertheless one of the most honored in all history." This statement comes from no other than one of the most honorable men, American president Abraham Lincoln. The 24 square miles (61 square km) area has remained the same since 1463 after Pope Pius II granted more lands to reward San Marino's alliance against Lord of Rimini.

Maybe San Marino should be used as the model for world peace.

This is unrealistic, idealistic and simply unachievable since the geographic world we have today has almost attained its orderliness. But if every country has the size and population of San Marino, there might not be any dispute of border, territory, centralized power or all these mind-boggling conflicts which cause these senseless wars even into the 21st century.