As a child of the late 90s, the news stories I faintly remember Moira Stuart drily informing me of were the unstoppable rise of a generation-defining girl group, the sudden death of a beloved princess, a greying man in a suit “not having sexual relations with that woman” (with no clue what that meant), and of a thing so unspeakably terrible going on in a place called Bosnia.
Belgrade. Over one-and-a-half million people call this sprawling, baroque-brutalist metropolis home which comfortably makes it the largest city in the Western Balkans and one of the largest in South-eastern Europe.
If there is one country that influences, or at least attempts to influence, the Western Balkans more than any other it is Serbia. The beating heart of former Yugoslavia, it comprises many of the biggest cities of the erstwhile country as well as the largest ethnic population, not that that has caused any problems ever.
As signs of a frigid winter began to cast a dark shadow over the Western Balkans, our itinerary took us away from the comfort and relative warmth of the Adriatic coastline inland towards the centre of the country. I say centre, but when the country you’re describing is shaped as peculiarly as Croatia is, the centre could be pretty much anywhere.
From a country with one of the shortest coastlines in Europe in Slovenia to another with one of the longest; that’s if you’re including its seven hundred and eighteen islands, three hundred and eighty-nine islets (whatever they are), and seventy-eight reefs and why on earth wouldn’t you?
Given the time of year we have chosen to travel and the pace with which we move from place to place, we don’t often get the chance to uncover the often unusual or inspiring stories of fellow travellers but in the small Slovene village of Kozina, about eighty kilometres southwest of Ljubljana, we bumped into a very interesting couple indeed.
Almost the instant we crossed the Italian-Slovenian border at Rateče, in the far north of both nations, the weather, architecture, and horned grazing cattle took a distinctly alpine turn as a scene from The Sound of Music opened dramatically in front of us.
Following an introductory peep around the striking streets of the Sammarinese capital the previous afternoon, we were up with the first cable car the following morn, sashaying our way to the top of Monte Titano for a full day of hedonistic exploration. We followed the ancient city’s winding lanes up to our first stop, the grandly named Basilica di San Marino.
Extremely old country, awful football team, perennially last in Eurovision, no not the United Kingdom but our next micronation: San Marino. Nestled in north-eastern Italy, ten kilometres west of the Italian coastal city of Rimini, San Marino can lay claim to having been an independent republic since Saint Marinus formed a monastic community there in 301 AD, thus making it the oldest sovereign state in the world as well as the oldest constitutional republic.
Following our Vatican visit and Rome roam, we re-joined Italy’s arterial motorway, the A1, in a south-easterly direction towards our last major Italian city of the tour: Naples. Informed to expect traffic chaos on levels only matched by Swindon’s Magic Roundabout, we decided to leave Vishnu well outside the city limits and use the decidedly ageing public transport system to get around.
