Viva la Rebubblica

Good afternoon! I’ve started early again to give myself something to do on the train. We left Nigel and Kay’s today at just after noon in order to make the train at 12.42. That gave us the whole morning to see a little more of the surrounding towns.

Part of the walk home this morning

 After a leisurely breakfast we joined Nigel and Kay on their daily walk, down the road, around the lake, up and down the hill and back home – although we piked out and turned back the way we had come at a little before their halfway point, in order to avoid the hard bit, and to let them forge ahead at their preferred speed. We saw them arrive back home about 400m ahead of us. After a quick shower we headed out again with Nigel, this time to their local supermarket (or more exactly, the hypermarket: a big supermarket that also sells clothes, household goods, appliances, TVs and so on. A Lottemart, for my VNese readers.) We bought some stuff to make a packed lunch to eat on the train, which we have just finished. We would have bought a couple of supermarket-bagsful of food (if they had supermarket bags, which they don’t) and at first I misread the receipt, and thought “OK, 33 Euros for that lot is a pretty good price,” but then I realized that in fact it had all cost only 17 Euros. It would surely have been $50 in Australia or NZ.

From there we drove across to another town for a coffee and cake for 2 (Nigel just had a water) – in Rome or Naples we were paying 10 Euros for a snack like this, more or less; here, 4.20. I though the cashier had made a mistake and thought I was paying only for myself, and even that would have been cheap.

This is not as pretty as Alba Adriatica beach 

(this was just a random place taken from the train) 

but you can see the beach umbrellas people pay for,

(orange) that are left over from the summer 

We were in a pretty town, one of many along the coast. Nigel explained that during the summer these towns are jumpin’, albeit with different clientele; some towns are suited to a younger crowd, with loud and lively bars, and others to older visitors, being a bit more sedate. Lots of Romans own a holiday house here, to come and stay in just for a month in the summer, so right now, there are loads of apartment blocks all shuttered up and dead. There is 100km or so of white-sanded coastline along this part of the Adriatic coast, with towns whose economies depend on summer holiday homes - some modern, some historic, depending on the town - and with deckchairs and umbrellas available for hire or sale. Nigel pays 200Euros a year for his local council rates, and 800Euros a year for permanent access to two deckchairs and an umbrella on their favourite beach. There is skiing in these provinces too, so maybe some people use the same homes in the winter, but I think the mountains might be an hour or two away. 

Speaking of mountains, the question of where all the farm animals are has been answered. The farmers in the low areas, where the train passed through on the way here, grow grain. Their hay bales contain the straw that was left after the grain has been harvested. They are not the farmers who raise the sheep and the cows, etc. The animals are higher up in the hills and the mountains. In the winter they might be brought down from the higher reaches, but generally they’re simply not visible from the train lines in the valleys or on the flat.

 So now we’re nearly up to date. After our sightseeing drive, we went home, slapped together some panini with prosciutto, mortadella, some local cheese and lettuce, and were out the door again in 15 minutes. Perfect. As it happened, the train was 10 minutes late getting into the station, and it’s getting a little bit later as we go along, which is a bit of a pain, since our ticket as booked only had an 8-minute connection time. However, the online tickets at least can be used within 4 hours of the stated departure time, so we don’t need to worry. I think the trains from the next stop run about every hour, so it’s no biggie. And where are we going to? I’ll let you know when I write again tonight.

 …

Yes, the train was late arriving. We missed our connection, but it was good to see other travellers, actual Italians, just as confused as we were when we hurried to the next platform just in case. We needed platform 7, and the electronic notice still had the departure info for our train on it, but the platforms seemed new, still under construction even, with no platform numbers showing, and what should have been No 7 didn’t have a train at it. But what should have been No 6 did have a train waiting. With no one on it. While we were wondering what to make of what we saw, more and more people came up and started milling around and wondering what to do, but no one actually had the nerve to get on the train, because it seemed wrong but it might have been right.  In the end I went back downstairs to look again at the platform information, and by now the info for No 7 had disappeared and it was now showing that the train at No 6 would be leaving in about 30 minutes. So I came back up waving my hands and saying in pidgin Italian that that platform is No 6 and that platform has nothing. And everyone wandered off again to find an alternative.

As I said, the tickets were still valid (I guess the train network is so notorious for delays that work-arounds are built into the system) but we had to go to the customer service area to find what other train would take us to where we wanted to go. There was a queue, but asking the question and getting an answer was not too difficult, and we still had about 25 minutes to spare, so that was good.

And where were we going? Your hours of nail-biting anticipation have come to an end. Tonight, dear reader, we are staying in… San Marino. When we started planning an actual itinerary for this trip, Stephen said he’d like to come here if it was possible, because when he was a kid, he collected stamps, and his favourites were the ones from San Marino. That’s all the reason we needed to visit, and when Nigel’s place turned out to be in Abruzzo, it made it all the easier to fit everything in. A 3-day detour just became worth it.

The mythical land of San Marino

So, we needed a train for Rimini, whence a bus service runs inland and up a mountain to San Marino. We are staying in a hotel tonight, in a room with a view down the mountain and over hills, valleys and plains that look like a Disney version of “a kingdom.” Think Shrek, or Disenchanted, if anyone’s watching that on Netflix. I always assumed they were just making that stuff up, but I suppose they must have got the idea from somewhere. We are again in the Centro Storico (you remember, it means ‘historical centre’) and a walk inside the fortified walls tonight revealed gorgeous old stone towers and Unesco-protected streets. This is the oldest republic in the world, according to a t-shirt I bought tonight, established in 301AD. It’s our 3^rd country since we arrived in Italy (the Vatican being No 2) because it never united with Italy, but remained a sovereign state. It’s the 5^th smallest independent country in the world. I thought it might be a playground for the rich and famous, a la Monaco, and there are quite a few designer shops here, but the language on the signs after Italian and English isn’t French or even Spanish, but Russian. And tonight, most of the tourists look pretty ordinary. Not that there are terribly many. And quite a few are elderly.

Fairy-tale streets

We went into a stamp, coin, and antique shop to see if they had any of Stephen’s boyhood stamps. The shop was being kept by a mother and daughter, and the mother welcomed us volubly, in many words of many languages. She finally settled on addressing us in German, despite the daughter insisting “No, mamma, Inglese!” Stephen bought a booklet of stamps, and the daughter had to translate the price from her mother’s German into English for us. They were both sweeties. When we finally left, the mother called out, “Bon soir!” So we replied, “Bon soir!”

We had a decent pasta meal for dinner at last. It was obviously a touristy restaurant, but the alternatives all looked pretty swanky. I had just a fairly plain carbonara, and Stephen a mushroom ravioli, and then we got some some gelato (elsewhere) to follow. This was definitely gelato, and really quite ice-creamy. Kay gave quite a detailed explanation last night of the description between gelato and ice cream and granita and something else icy, but I got lost fairly early on and didn’t like to say anything, so I still don’t know exactly what’s what. But if I feel like ice cream, I’ll look for a gelateria. As they say, if the shoe fits, eat it.