Views Inward and of the Appenines

San Marino is a beautiful place, as long as you look outward. There are pretty spots in-country (Montegiardano and Faetano are beautiful, small towns), but there is also a lot of bad sixties architecture and high-rise sprawl. Because it's a desirable place to live, a lot of people live here. Luckily for the Sammarinese, the Italian hills that surround them are very picturesque, and the views are spectacular. This is a westward view at dawn from a high point in Aquaviva. The mountains are in La Marche, the Italian region that borders San Marino to the south.
At sunset, looking east from a nearby point. The cluster of lights high up on the right is the upper town of San Marino proper, on top of Monte Titano. The low land to the left is the coast, where the lights of Rimini are visible in the far distance.
This is a view from Montegiardino, on the far eastern border of the country, looking westward at Monte Titano. If you look closely, you can see the three towers on the summit. Here, it's easy to put the country's size into perspective: the mountain, with the capital on top, is basically at the center of the country, so this picture essentially includes the entire eastern portion of the republic. We've mentioned this time and again, but this is a small country - with only twenty-four square miles of land, it's the third smallest in Europe and the fifth smallest in the world.
The ocean is clearly visible from San Marino town. Below, in the foreground, the town of Borgo Maggiore can be seen. Beyond, snaking along the road towards the left hand side, are the towns of Domagnano, Serravalle and Dogana. There is then a ten mile swath of Italy between the border and the Mediterranean. This part of Italy is the Emilia-Romagna region.
Looking the other way from the top of the mountain, the Appenine mountains begin to rise in earnest. The north-south range is lower here than in other places, but the peaks are still beautiful. The town of Aquaviva, the westernmost village in the land, is hidden in a valley just behind that closest, dark peak.
Looking up at Monte Titano, with the overdeveloped hills below it. Getting around on this side of the mountain isn't much fun. There is basically one very busy, winding, highwaylike road that curves up from Dogano (which is actually the largest town in San Marino - bigger, even, than the capital) up to the right of the peak and around to the top. It's full of hairpins and sudden roundabouts, police traps and crazy drivers, hidden exits and confusing signs. We've become accustomed to it, but prefer a back road that we discovered by chance.
Much of the lower republic, toward the ocean, looks like this: big buildings and big construction sites. This was our view from the apartment we rented for a few nights in the beginning of our stay. It was pretty in its own way, but not particularly appealing.
At sunset, from near our (probably illegal) campsite in parco Montecerretto. The Italian portion of the mountains - the border is just down the hill there - is almost empty. A few little towns are visible in the daytime, strung out on some of the hills, but there's not much in between.
A nearly identical view, during another sunset, from higher up the mountain. With these views, it's easy to find San Marino a beautiful place, even if its Italian neighbors don't enjoy looking at its sprawl.

Aperitivo: A Love/Hate Relationship

It began in Italy, about a month ago. Literally the moment we crossed the border from Slovenia into Fruili-Venezia Guilia, we met Aperitivo. Too used to five or six o'clock dinners in short-days-Moldova, we had a few hours to kill before settling down for a meal. So, we ordered some drinks at a bar. With our first glass of wine, we were given peanuts and potato chips. Our second order brought finger sandwiches and our third, bruschetta. Early dinner after all! For the next two weeks, we ruined many an appetite (but saved many a euro) with aperitivo. If we stayed in a town for more than a day, we'd find ourselves referring to bars according to their offerings. "Where do you want to go for a drink? Popcorn Place or Pistachio Cafe?" Things were kicked up a notch in San Marino, though...
It turns out that, like Italians, Sammarinese people really like their drink snacks. However, they have a slightly different method of going about it. Around noon, bowls of olives, chips and nuts are set up on the corner of a bar. That way, if you came in for a drink, you can toothpick yourself a little snack. At around five, sandwiches that went unsold that day (my assumption) are cut up and stacked onto plates. Sometime after that, a fresh pizza will come out of the oven and join the aperitivo buffet. Somehow, eating a free dinner of potato chips has lost its romantic edge for us. So, early on in the country, we decided to sit at a table instead of subjecting ourselves to temptation at the bar.
But Aperitivo would follow! The bartender would inevitably come on over with a big smile and plate loaded with snacks. Now it was not only more difficult to stop ourselves from eating it, but we were having a much larger share of it than if we'd been sampling from the general pool. It's a small country, so we've revisited certain cafes over and over. When, upon our fifth visit to Garden Restaurant Merlin ordered our pre-dinner wine "and please no peanuts," the very friendly waitress smiled and laughed. And then brought us a bowl of peanuts.
The only feasible solution to this dilemma was to just start drinking at home (meaning in our tent or at a picnic table). The first barrier was to figure out a way to have a cold drink, when wine is sold unfrigerated, ice isn't sold at all and it's ranged from 60 - 80degrees most days. We filled up a pot with cold well water and set our Sammarinese frizzante inside. As we waited, we missed/longed for Aperitivo. From that time forward, we planned ahead. Piado with a slice of cheese, a cherry tomato and a fresh leaf of basil goes down a lot lighter than a cube of foccaccia. Picking up some marinated artichokes from a deli was an even quicker, easier method of aperitivo-ing we often employed.
Other times, we strayed from the usual drink snack fare altogether and went full-on Camp. In our two weeks in San Marino, we consumed two cans of King Oscar sardines (the best sardines on the planet) and this absolutely delicious can of sprats from Riga recommended by Merlin's uncle. We're not sure how he procures these Latvian sprats in Vermont, but being as we brought our King Oscars over here from America, we appreciate and understand how one would go to great lengths for the perfect can of fish.
With our homemade variety, we got back in touch with the real meaning of aperitivo - spurring one's appetite awake before dinner as opposed to completely killing it from the inside out. Three countries from now, or possibly even sooner, I can see myself at a bar drinking something other than an Aperol Spritz. Most likely a beer. I will turn to my right and wish I saw my old friend Aperitivo at the corner of the bar. I may even wind up ordering badly made martinis so that I can ask for extra olives. But for now, I am glad to leave this period of classy junk food behind me.

What is a Sammarinese?

What is someone from San Marino called? Why, a Sammarinese, of course! Plural: Sammarineses, or - in Italian - Sammarinese, the same as the singular. It's a strange moniker, and sounds a little like a garbled form of what you would expect them to be called... Our first few days, we were saying "San Mariner" and "San Marinite." These young Sammarinese were fixtures at a bar we frequented in Seravalle - usually they ordered their drinks separately, but one night they got a bucket of Aperol spritz. They drank it with long straws and had a grand old time.
The license plates here are rather quaint, namely because they aren't the typical European style. In fact, the microstate isn't even a member of the EU or a signee of the Schengen agreement, though they use the euro and have an open border with Italy (their only neighbor).
Saint Marinus was, of course, the original Sammarinese and the namesake of the country - a whole floor, practically, of the state museum was dedicated to paintings of the saint, many of them depicting him like this, holding up a miniature Monte Titano.
It's a prosperous country, with the lowest unemployment rate in Europe, a budget surplus, no national debt, a wealthy populace and subsidized lunches for workers. We aren't sure, exactly, how the lunch program works. The economic wellbeing is clearly made possible by the tourist industry - over three million people visit every year, and their spending accounts for more than fifty percent of the GDP. Because there are lower income taxes here than in Italy, it's quite difficult to become a resident and there are very few immigrants.

Even though its military is tiny, there are six separate divisions within San Marino's armed forces, plus the police force. There are: the Guardians of the Rock, the Guard of the Council, the Crossbow Corps, the Gendarmerie (not to be confused with the police), the Army Militia and the Military Ensemble. This last division is really just a marching band, but they are probably more important to the republic than the others. Each group has its own set of uniforms - one of our favorites is this yellow outfit, complete with marigold gloves. This man officially keeps watch on one of the main gates to the old town, but really just directs traffic and looks aloof.
There isn't much flat ground in the country, and, although the Adriatic is visible from the eastern part of Mount Titano, it is completely landlocked. There is a lake, though, and this is it. I would call it a manmade mudhole, personally, but it's marked on the maps and is mentioned in much of the tourist literature. It's primarily used for fishing (it's stocked, of course), the purpose it was built for. We took a long walk in the sun on the hottest day of our stay, hoping to find the water more inviting than it was. It's been hard not to cross into Italy and head down the long slope to the shore - this was, needless to say, a disappointment.

Terra di San Marino

Tourism, banking, ceramics and electronics are the key industries in San Marino - basically everything else is imported from Italy. However, there is a little cluster of products made right here in the country. One of which is "Torta Tre Monti," the traditional Sammarinese cake which has been produced commercially by La Serenissima since 1942. (The "Antique Bake Shop" seems to have a monopoly on the industry).
Layers of wafer are stuck together with hazelnut/chocolate frosting and then its edges are "crowned" with chocolate fondue. It is completely handmade, using the same techniques as sixty years ago and is traditionally much larger and circular. We just didn't need that much torte, so we opted for the 21st century snack-size variety. La Serenissima also makes "Torta Titano," the other Sammarinese cake, which is basically the same thing but instead of wafers, softer puff pastry is layered. They both have shelf lives of about a year, so I can imagine they're quite popular around Christmas time and in college care packages.
They real pride of the Sammarinese gastronomic world, though, is their Terra di San Marino Consortium and brand. The agricultural cooperative is well funded by the government and works to ensure that the country's rural land is protected and promoted. Almost half of all the terrain here is agricultural, but being surrounded by Italy, it's a little more difficult to get a good "Buy Local" movement off the ground. In fact, when we set out to visit the consortium, we found just an office and returned to the Italian chain grocery store to look for the Terra di San Marino logo on the shelves. The first thing we found was this package of piada.
Piada bread and sandwiches created with it (piadinos) are ever present in San Marino, but come originally from the surrounding Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. It looks, tastes and feels exactly like a flour tortilla - though maybe a tiny bit thicker? Resisting the urge to make burritos, we warmed them, quartered them and coated them with a drizzle of olive oil and some paprika. Another few were dipped in honey. Unfortunately, the olive oil and honey were from foreign lands. They are two of key products in the Terra di San Marino collection, but we simply have too much of each to warrant buying some more.
The Vini Tipici Consortium is a large part of the Land of San Marino Cooperative. Merlin already spoke about our visit there and the wine itself. They also produce a few liquors and we tried out the "Acquavite di Une Moscato." Neither of us are big grappa fans, but it was actually quite nice: smooth, a little sweet....
...it also made for an excellent camping lantern! Just throw a head lamp on top and you've got yourself some nice mood lighting by which to enjoy the last of your Sammarinese cheese. That's it right there in the front. Not showing an up-close shot is a decision I've made. Let's just call this cheese a "full on Monet" in the immortal words of Clueless. It looked as much like a glob of slightly moist cream cheese as the piada looks like tortilla. Though, luckily the flavor disparity was more defined. It tasted like a tangier fresh mozzarella and had more of a stickiness to its bounce. I guess you could say it was halfway between a ball of fresh mozzarella and some run-of-the-mill brie.
Here it is packaged from the grocery store. Like wine, dairy products have their own cooperative subdivision: Centrale del Latte. They make sure that every aspect of the production process happens right here in San Marino and uphold cheesemaking traditions. Most of the cheese on offer is pretty new - I'm actually not sure if they have caves at all. It was nice to see Il Latte milk being used in almost every cappuccino we ordered, though we 've yet to find the local yogurt amongst the Dannon explosion of a grocery section. (It's really an Activia explosion, but that just sounded so wrong).

A Very Red Museum

To be fair, not all of the cars at the Ferrari museum in Faetano, San Marino, are red. But the emphasis is on "rossa" cars. Most of these rare specimens were driven in actual races, some are still raced today, nearly all are covered with decals and competition numbers. This is a peculiar place that is probably (but not definitely) worth an hour or so of your time. It is officially known as "Maranello Rosso Ferrari Museum," and also houses a Fiat Abarth exhibition, that we didn't see.
The museum is located right on the border with Italy in the town of Faetano, which doesn't seem to have much else to offer. Across the international boundary - which I say in jest; there isn't even a sign - is the airplane museum that we inadvertently visited a while ago. That first trip to this corner of San Marino was actually made to visit the Ferrari Museum, but there was a note on the door that said they were closed because of "extraordinary repairs," or something like that. When we came back, we were let in by a woman who seemed a little inconvenienced by our presence. She sold us tickets (12 euros each, which is outrageous) and turned on the lights for us. Nobody else came in while we were there.
The space itself is tight and strangely lit, with chandeliers and streetlight-styled fixtures casting difficult glimmers onto the mirrored walls. There are some carved doors and oversized urns that - I think - are supposed to evoke a swanky salon where someone has decided to park their collection of exotic cars. Each of the models is hemmed in by a guardrail thing, which makes them impossible to photograph whole and are also tripping hazards.
A good deal of the museum's literature and information is devoted to Enzo Ferrari, the racing champion and founder of the company, who apparently spent a lot of his life in San Marino. Wall plaques and photographs showed the man next to a wide selection of his quotes. Unfortunately, the museum also featured a large number of stills and "behind the scenes" photos of "Ferrari," a movie written about Ferrari by his son and featuring many of the cars in the Maranello Rosso collection.
This is a factory frame, used to form and fit pieces of sheet metal to the shape of the finished car.
In the museum's defense, the close quarters, gauche decor and questionable information displays couldn't cover up how beautiful the cars were. Rebecca, who has always said that Ferraris are ugly, admitted that she was struck by the looks of these models. They are all low slung, with curves and details that are more striking in person than in any picture.
The majority of them date from the late fifties to early seventies, with a few more recent outliers. This particular car was owned by Marylyn Monroe, and was the only white vehicle in the place.
In the end, it's mesmerizing to be there. There are twenty-five cars, many of them easily recognizable. It's a bizarre, mirrored, cramped museum that is probably worth the twelve euro admission price if you are really into cars or Ferraris. If you aren't, it will seem too expensive but may still charm you.

Vivi Tipici

First off, it's not "vivi tipici," it's "vini tipici." We have been calling it "vivi" because of a typo on a road sign. At least, we think it was a typo.

San Marino has a small wine consortium that produces almost all of the alcohol in the country. There are a few older vintages left over from more fragmented times, but today it is mostly about cheaper whites and reds that are sold in bulk to bars and (sometimes) in bottles to tourists. It's not bad, but it's best drunk without thinking about it. The bottles above, which are two of the better products, cost €4.50 and €2.00 (left and right), and are definitely palatable.
At the wine consortium in Borgo Maggiore - which is the town at the ocean-side foot of Monte Titano - the fermentation tanks dominate the parking lot. It's quite the sight, but it's also a pretty small scale operation when you consider that it's the entire county's output.
This Saturday, a surprising number of people were driving in, parking and unloading empty bottles from their trunks. The bottles ranged in size from one liter plastic things, to larger glass jugs to these enormous vessels. There are four gas-pump type filling stations in the shop - two for white, two for red - and a bleary eyed man running the nozzles.
The price per liter was €1.65 at three of the pumps, and €1.25 (marked as a sale!) on the fourth. Most people seemed to want this red, but we opted instead for two others: the Riserva Titano Brut Frizzante and the Castelli Sammarinesi Vino Bianco. Both were in bottles. We might have filled up our own containers, but didn't have anything that seemed suitable.

Most of the customers were older and seemed to know the pump attendant. I'm sure some of them were picking up orders for restaurants, but some obviously were just getting their week's supply of table wine. At €8.25 for five liters, i'd say they were getting a deal.

Later, we stopped at a vineyard on the way to Faetano. The leaves are just beginning to unfurl from the vines. They're a magnificent spring-green. In the background, Monte Titano rises up and the edge of Borgo Maggiore can be seen (the cluster of houses at right, under the cliffs). There is quite a bit of land under vine in little San Marino, but it appears to be secondary to olive production.
We drank the frizzante last night with our picnic of tomato, cheese, lambstongue, artichoke and piadina. It wasn't optimally cold or served in the right glasses, but that doesn't really matter. The bottle certainly emptied quickly enough. It is probably our favorite of the San Marino wines, though we are fond of the frizzante served on tap in all the bars.

Gypsy Kitchens: Mare e Monti

San Marino doesn't have its own cuisine, per se, so we've been extra perceptive of menu trends and things they seem to particularly like. When I first saw "mare e monti" as an option on a pizza list and read that "sea and mountain" meant shrimp and mushroom, I felt that there was finally a pizza option designed just for me. No more sighing wistfully at Merlin's proscuitto e fungi pizza while cutting up my own protein-less variety. The combination has since popped up on every other pizza list, as well as pastas. It makes perfect sense that San Marino, with its views of the Adriatic and the Appenines, would embrace the combination as sort of a signature. So, for our first Sammarinese home cooked meal, we decided to try to make mare e monti ravioli.
We procured fresh pasta from the nearby grocery store, shrink wrapped wads of folded sheets most likely intended for lasagna. The plan was to make one batch of mare ravioli (shrimp and red pepper flakes), one batch of monti (mushroom and parsley) and then top them both with some sauteed tomato, basil and oil. As we lifted the pasta off of its styrofoam tray, we realized that it was too thick and, when wetted, didn't stick together at all. Definitely not ravioli material. The mushrooms were already diced and cooking, but we left the shrimp whole while we decided on a plan B.
Thinking back to our good ole eating-out-too-much NYC days, Merlin thought of the 'raviolo' he was once served. Basically, it was one single pocket of pasta, created simply be folding a sheet of pasta over its filling. Right up our alley! Unfortunately, fresh pasta doesn't come with instructions and neither of us quite knew how to get it right. Our sheets all got stuck together and we managed only a handful of large enough shreds. "We just won't put this on the blog," Merlin said to me as he struggled to tear apart a boiling hot cube of starch. Oops.
The thing is, our stomachs don't have eyes (hence, my love of cheap Indian). The shrimp were as sweet as their color had suggested (did you see how pink they were raw?) The pasta itself was delicious enough to make us stop cursing the day it was born and our filling and sauce were pretty darn perfect, if I do say so myself. Our mare e monti was a delicious failure of a meal.

Sammarinese Mercatale

Borgo Maggiore is one of the nine castelli in San Marino and also happens to be the name of that castello's largest town. Early in its history, around the late 1200s, it was called "Mercatale" (marketplace). The most important market in the country still takes place here every Thursday. Parking was tight and people trudged up and down the hills with their plastic bags filled with rainbow polyester. Instead of in a market square, the vendors spilled through all the narrow streets of the pretty town.
We went with a shopping bag and a hope to find dinner. Passing by the few fruit and vegetable stands we saw at the very beginning of the sprawl, we hoped to find a larger collection of food sellers. Instead, we found the Borgo Maggiore market to be exactly like most European markets we've visited: filled with more fabric than food. Curtains, blankets, blouses, silk flowers that the mosquitos still swarmed around and poked at. I understood their disappointment.
We found cacti and t-shirts with Christina Aguilera's face on it, but no cheese or wine or meat or fish... Then, we spotted a little boy digging down into a greasy paper cone and walked in the direction from which he'd come. We smelled fry wafting in the air and finally stumbled upon a stand which churned out helping after helping of freshly fried seafood to very eager customers. Just a few feet away stood two identical porchetta stands, with competing pork and tins of crackling. While both things were enticing, we were after something a little more - raw.
The goods seem so random and mass produced, yet these markets are always bustling. I honestly wonder how many of the customers are resellers. In San Marino, it seemed like a lot of people just stopped by to chat with their friends. You definitely overheard more gossiping than haggling. It also seemed to give people an excuse to have a pre-10am glass of wine - sort of like brunch or Wimbledon.
I may or may not have purchased my very first cheap, European market undergarment- but that's neither here nor there. We struck out on dinner ingredients, but managed to procure a little food for the walk back down.
This table appeared to be run by the food collective of San Marino and the youngish unsmiling man was very keen on explaining which grains were used to make the small variety of bread he had for sale. There were pale, round loaves that looked exactly like enormous sugar cookies (complete with liberal sugar dusting). We opted, instead for this sheet-bread thing. It was very oily and sort of bland but pleasantly dry somehow. We think he said it hadn't been baked at all. The huge crystals of salt on top really helped it make the jump from 'interesting' to enjoyable.
The most impressive part of this generally unimpressive market was the fact that under the eaves, in the narrow passageway which wound around a strip of stores, they had actually found some level ground. As we pulled a little basket on wheels around the produce section of a supermarket later that day, I felt awful that I hadn't purchased more from the market. Merlin made me feel better immediately, though. "All the market stuff was imported from Italy, too." Sammarinese produce basically consists of olive oil, wine and cheese. We, dutifully, had a large helping of all three with our dinner.