Arriving in Andorra

They don’t tell you much about Andorra. Not in the guidebooks. Not in drunken hostel conversations. It’s the kind of place you don’t end up in by accident. Me? I was curious. And that’s usually enough.

Wedged between France and Spain like the afterthought of a cartographer’s hangover, Andorra is a nation the size of a sneeze with the ambition of a Bond villain’s mountain lair. There’s no airport. No train station. Just winding asphalt snaking through jagged peaks, crawling with duty-free pilgrims and ski junkies. Hidden away high in the Pyrenees mountains, the roads pass through valleys and tunnels, making it feel less like entering a country and more like slipping through a back door in Europe’s basement.

Sant Esteve Church in Andorra la Vella.

I have arrived in Andorra la Vella, is one of the world’s highest capital cities at an altitude of 1029 meters. The streets turn out to be clean in that dystopian, overly controlled kind of way, somewhere between Zürich and a mall in Dubai. Glass and steel storefronts line avenues selling watches, perfume and electronics like it’s 1999. It’s a paradise for the kind of people who spontaneously buy a Rolex or two on their lunch break.

The air is thin and the architecture modern. Everywhere I look, there is just mountains, sky and concrete. The people are reserved, efficient, almost Swiss in their manners. They’ve been dealing with outsiders for centuries. I’m just another one passing through.

Andorra is one of the so called European mini-states. I’ve been to some of them, such as Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta and the Vatican. They usually permeates a sense of hidden beauty, that they have something unique that the locals are not too eager to share with visitors.

Tiny street in Andorra la Vella.

As far as mini-states goes, there is nothing weird about Andorra. At least not in comparison to other more extreme examples.

Sitting on my book shelf for ages is the book called Micro Nations by John Ryan. It features a list of eccentric oddball wannabe-nations such as Molossia (located in Nevada), Whangamomona (on the nothern island of New Zealand) and the amazingly named Republic of Kugelmugel (located in the Prater park of Vienna). It even features the Swedish area of Ladonia, well-known for the statues by Lars Vilks.

In such distinct company, Andorra is impeccably normal.