Mystical Venice

Mann speaks about the two ways in which he has arrived in Venice as the opening to his experience in the mystical city. While this detail can be easily overlooked, it seemed of particular significance to me. I remember that coming to Venice by train you walk out of the station into a much less grand part of the city than if you had taken a boat there. Walking out of its doors you look out on the hulking, dirty vaporetti and a narrower portion of the Grand Canal. It is very much as he says, “entering the palace by the back door.”
Later in my stay in Venice we returned from an outing to one of the outer islands and came in on much the same path that Aschenbach takes on this trip to the city. I remember thinking, as he does, that this is the way Venice is meant to be approached. You see the Palace and basilica spread out in front of you, the rest of the skyline framing them. The colorful buildings pop against the black water with the fronts of Gondolas bobbing in the foreground.
It’s fitting that it’s in this manner than Aschenbach approaches Venice in this particular trip, as it is vastly different than his previous. I like the mystical way that he speaks about Venice throughout the rest of the narrative as it not only mirors the city itself but what happens to him while he's there. He really captures the feeling that you get as you walk around the city. He says that everything he encountered was “outlandish” and it is quite an apt way to describe Venice. Nothing seems real and it really is not. You go to the city that people say is sinking into the sea and nothing seems like it really could have happened, everything seems like it was created just for that moment as if an amusement park. Ironically that’s really what it is. Venice was Disney World for upper class Europe in the middle portion of the second millennia.
I found it odd however that he chooses Venice of all places to go on his trip. He begins by saying that he wished to go somewhere “exotic and distinctive.” While Venice is certainly unique, it has been a tourist trap since its beginnings. It does not seem initially like the kind of place that Aschenbach is looking for via his description. What he does achieve, or at least what he thinks he will achieve by going there is the escape and relaxation of such a resort town.