Italy has always had a special place in my heart. Ever since that first time in high school when I decided to take a beginner’s course in Italian, I knew there was a special bond between the country and me.

Fast forward 20 years and I find myself in Venice with a man I have never met before. And no, he was not a complete stranger to me; we’d had online contact about 4 months before we decided to meet up in Venice. I believe the city was his choice. Or, if I remember it correctly we made a list of possible cities to meet in, and Venice was on his list. I did not oppose, of course – let’s meet in Venice! So, I flew from my country, and he flew from his country. What am I doing, I thought to myself. I don’t even know how he smells!

To get from the airport I had to travel by ferry to reach Venice. It was late evening and I had booked a hotel on the nearby island Burano for my first night. The foggy canals were quiet yet welcoming. I slept like a baby and woke up at dawn.

The familiarity only grew when I arrived in Venice — that strange sensation of being somewhere new, yet feeling as if I already knew every corner. I can’t recall the streets being crowded. Mid August, and I didn’t notice the stressed out tourists, I only heard forgotten secrets lingering in every corner.

And the man? Yes, the man… He showed up looking as handsome as he’d seemed online. If you can call a man beautiful, then I would call him beautiful. Yet he complicated reality by arriving in a form I didn’t think existed outside fiction. Disney Princes do exist beyond the movies, I thought. The way he looked at the city made me stop looking at it and watch him instead. He had this calm, careful way of taking things in, but there was always a bit of a storm behind his eyes.

I experienced this deep nostalgia for a place I’d never visited before. The narrow alleys and piazzas felt as if they whispered secrets from a past I had forgotten I’d lived. It was as if I had run along those streets and bridges, touched the buildings, leaned out from a small window and fallen asleep to the city’s late-evening sounds. And when the rain started to fall, the city became even more captivating. It drifted through the alleys and nudged us closer, clinging to our hair and clothes, shimmering as if the city had scattered tiny sparks instead of water.

For nearly a year after the trip, every time I meditated I found myself back in the arms of Venice. The first time it happened, it caught me off guard. There was always the same piazza — the one I kept returning to. I could see myself on a wooden bench beneath an olive tree, reading. It was a memory I’d never lived, yet somehow my soul recognized it.

I don’t know if he sensed the same alluring magic that seemed to control every street corner. I don’t know if he heard the walls hinting at secrets from a past life. I never asked him. I don’t think he would have laughed at me for asking (he would have laughed, though, if he knew I saw him as a Disney Prince). I think he would have contemplated his answer for weeks, and then given me a thoughtful reply.

Not all Disney Princes are meant for you. But he showed me something beautiful. He took me back to my soul city, and for that, I am forever grateful.