After getting my passport stamped – and being given a pair of 3D glasses – by bubbly girls in jumpsuits at a makeshift border crossing, I spent a very, very good part of late afternoon at the Uzupio Kavine, which, the republic’s treasury secretary explained to me on the veranda, is the café, the bar and the parliament house.

The republic was founded in 1997 and has its own [fake] money – one unit of which is always good for a glass of beer at the bar here, making it “the world’s most stable currency” according to the secretary – and its owned famed constitution, which guarantees (amongst a laundry list of other curious, charming and sometimes rather enlightened tenets) that:

• Everybody has the right to live by the River Vilnele, and the River Vilnele has the right to flow by everybody.
• Everybody has the right to appreciate their unimportance.
• Everyone may share what they possess.
• No one can share what they do not possess.
• Everyone is responsible for their freedom.
• Everyone has the right to cry.
• A dog has the right to be a dog.