San Marino - Chill Vibes and Awful News

The day started pretty chill, as we had breakfast in our beautiful little flat in Bologna, before heading off to my country #36 - San Marino.
The elevation up until the old town of San Marino was actually insane, and we both had to adjust our ears to it more than once. My car was once again very loyal and brought us right up to the centre of this little country.
The view from here was amazing, and I thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere of San Marino right away. It exuded calmness, peace and quiet, which was just the thing I needed after the last couple of days. Although the old town is very apparent to just be for tourists, I didn't mind as much. The streets were empty and the tourists respectful enough (most of them being German, as usual). We did pay for a San Marino stamp in our passports (5 €, very pretty stamp, will treasure it forever), and wondered about the many weapons that were apparently sold here. After a quick Google search, we found out the following: San Marino is the oldest Republic still in place, as it was founded in 301 AC and after over 1700 years is still independent. San Marino was never particularly rich, it was always trading with post stamps and coins. I guess, the geography of it (laying mostly on a hill) is the reason, it is independent to this day. There are 33000 people living in San Marino, and they all speak Italian and (because of tourists) English. The 5th smallest country of the world has one of the lowest unemployment rates and one of the highest life expectancies for men.
When your country is mostly situated on a huge rock, your biggest concern is drinking water. They've built huge wells like the one in front of the Palazzo Publico to keep that problem at bay.
The most known sights of San Marino are the three towers, overlooking the rest of the country, at the bottom of the mountain. We had such weird weather that day, that there were huge fog clusters (coming from clouds) blocking the view at the towers at times, before the sun came through again, burning our skin.
After taking pictures over pictures from the atmospheric views, we finally settled down to eat our first (and what would be our final) gelato of the holiday. Before, the weather was never as nice and we both just didn't really fancy ice cream. But now the time has come.
Unfortunately, we couldn't really enjoy it to the fullest, as Marv's mum send us horrible news. Apparently, there was a big warning from the weather forecast for the Northern part of Italy regarding rainstorms as well as huge snow falls. Especially for the region we wanted to drive to (and through) the next few days. The only palpable thought in my head was "Fuck!"
After waiting 7 months (if you don't count in the trip to Washington as it was a FAM, not a holiday, it was 9 months) for these holidays, we were now both standing in front of the decision to either cut our holidays short or to maybe be washed away by a landslide or avalanche. Actually, it wasn't such a hard decision. After researching a bit more, we quickly concluded that our lives were more worthy than a concluded trip, that we cancelled our upcoming accommodations in Monza and Austria, booked a new one for Munich the next day, and drove back to Bologna, to pack our stuff. We'd stay one more night in our beloved little flat, before checking out one day earlier, to hopefully get to the save side of the Brenner before it was too late. It was actually not really understandable for us, sitting there in the sun enjoying our gelato, that we'd have to cut our holiday short because of too much rain. We were super sad, but to be honest, we could count ourselves lucky, that we could just leave and not live in this area ourselves.
We messaged the owner of our rental flat, explaining our reasoning, and they were so kind to enact the tax (52€ for 4 days, 6,50€ pp/night, the fuck Bologna!) as we have already paid for one more night (which was worth 110€) and wouldn't use that. I actually thought this was extremely nice and honestly guys - I rarely want to go anywhere twice, but as we have to do the tour once more anyway, I'll definitely make sure to be staying in Le Margherite next time as well.
Why do we have to do the tour again? Well, we weren't able to see the racetracks in Imola nor Monza, which I definitely want to see. And on our way back to Germany, we didn't want to go back through the Brenner-Pass but rather drive through (and therefore obv visit) Liechtenstein (my lost #37). So, next time, these are the main goals. I might as well plan them together with visiting Monaco - but then it has to be at a time when the chance of seeing a Formula 1 driver is the highest (still have to figure out when this might be outside the Monaco GP, because I'm not wealthy enough for that). Plenty to look forward to then, but it is still very, very sad to leave prematurely.Okumaya devam et