At the stazione, I bought my ticket to La Spezia. I finally realized I was in Italy. Feeling strong and confident, I thought the desk clerk was right, “Such a night...”

There was not too much to deal with in La Spezia. A formerly green fence layered with dust in front of the railway station and down there, a noisy harbor, at times expelling like a whale a flood of bad smells, roar, and rusty squeaking. For me, Corsica turned to a well-thumbed picture card, never posted. Anyway, the goal has been reached, or rather it revealed to me itself. I didn't mean to torture myself in further self-examination, so I opened all the windows of my musty fortress and let the fresh air in. Why again to block the way, run in circles, and chase my own shadow?

I popped back to the ticket office and asked for the earliest connection to some major city.

“Train to Venice leaves in fifteen minutes, Rome in forty,” said the voice behind the counter.

So I set out to Venice.

Although I was in that city with my brother and parents when I was a little child, I can't remember anything of it – perhaps except of pigeons. Still I excitingly fantasized about sun-glare blending with fog, salt air, and weighty tangled secrets. Blurred contours of Messrs. Giacomo Casanova, Lorenzo da Ponte and Antonio Vivaldi. And even more blurred figures of doge's nightingales, nimble gondoliers and carnival masks. Fishy smell under stinky dawns in the damp city. As I saw for myself, I wasn't wide of the mark. But I couldn't have guessed how strong that city would take me into its arms, getting hold of me and won't be letting go.

I jumped out of my train at Santa Lucia station and no sooner had I left the building, than I uttered a simple quiet, “wow”. Fireworks of a breathtakingly beautiful city displayed before me, “without prior notice,” as a lawyer would say. It was eleven o'clock that night. The city waved to me, Canal Grande shaking its head silently in complaint, that it took me ages to be along. Then there was a Ponte degli Scalzi on my left, urging me to walk in, “everything is ready, Sir.” I just had to sit down on the stairs and wait until my heart stops racing and I catch my breath again.

I stayed in the city for three days. No matter if naked or hidden through some of the crazy deluding masks of Venice, I was happy. And head over heels in love.

I fell in love with la cittá. I don't want to portray these three days and I won't be. It simply was a heady wedding night. On the Piazza San Marco, I got a whiff of the sea and followed its lead...