Just spent two days in Venice, which was AWESOME.
It was the weekend before Carnivale, so there were mask shops everywhere selling everything from cheap glitter-and-glue to elaborate artpieces of gold and feathers. Not to mention the weather, which was warm and sunny, something that isn't going to happen in good old Deutschland for a while, and the gelato. Need I say anything besides Italian gelato?
Bridges are to Venice what bakeries are to Marburg - you can't go a block without finding one. Yet even with so much water, it is hard to remember that the city is sinking. It looks so old, one can only imagine it will be there forever. Narrow alleys are everywhere, so that not even the most cautious person can avoid them. Luckily it is a big tourist town, so they try to keep the crime rate low.
How bizarre must it be to live in a place where you have more tourists than neighbors?
In any case, what struck me as most wondrous about being in Venice is that when you think of it, it is almost a mythical land. Like Narnia, or Atlantis. People write books about the place (see Cornelia Funke's The Thief Lord, auf Deutsch, Herr der Diebe; also Mary Hoffman's City of Masks) and the magic that takes place within. Of course, people write stories about magic in London and New York as well (neither of which I have been too), but those cities star so often only because that is what most writers are familiar with. Still, it brings up an interesting point: Nearly every single book that takes place in London - or any city - takes place in a different universe.
I am not just talking about fantasy, for once. I mean that the universe a book takes place in is necessarily different from the one we live in - we cannot meet the characters in ours. Often, too, the characters do not meet each other. Here, fantasy is a good medium to demonstrate this - the London from which the Pevensie children go to Narnia simply cannot possibly be the same London that housed Clive Barker's mystif (Imajica - like Abarat, but for grownups).
Yet going to a place in the flesh makes it real. To think that the Venice I went to is the same Venice that my relatives have gone to, that my friends have visited, where Cornelia Funke drew her inspiration for The Thief Lord. No streets had been rearranged or buildings added to suit the plot or the author's memory. It is the Venice that exists on its own, independent from the imagination of a writer or reader.
It is also worth saying that Venice is a magical city in its own right, without authorial additions. Even when it is overrun by tourists, you can tell that it truly deserves to be a tourist destination, and that it is appreciated. No one goes to Venice to drink and party - they go to Venice for the magic, to be able to say "I have been to Venice" the same way one would want to say "I have been to Narnia."
What is the magic of Venice, then? Is it the architecture, the history, the age? The canals and gondoliers and bridges? Palaces and churches - but can those not be found all over Europe? The glassmakers and mask-shops? Is it something in the air, the water, the light, a mystical aura? Is it simply the fact that I have read too many fantasy books about the place - though the same could be said for London? Though it occurs to me that most fantasy stories that start in London end up going somewhere else, but the magic in Venice is actually in Venice. Why was it that when I was aimlessly browsing Ryanair for cheap tickets, that as soon as I saw the name Venice I knew I had to go there?
In this life, Venice is the closest any of us can get to Narnia.
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