On Childhood Impressions

A few years ago my brother and his wife took their two young children to Italy on vacation. I will never forget the conversation I had with my niece when she returned. I asked her what she saw and liked and she talked about the gelato and about "Uncle Peter's church." I agreed with her that gelato was special, she insisted it was better in Italy than in the US. She talked at length about "Uncle Peter's church" about how large it was, how it had pictures painted on the ceilings and whether Uncle Peter knew he had a church in Italy. That conversation comes to mind a lot lately because some adult probably had a similar one with me when I first visited Switzerland. I was in junior high school when I took my first trip to Europe and our first stop was Switzerland. At the time we lived in Sterling Forest, a rather homogenous community in Tuxedo Park, New York. We made the occasional trip into New York City and this was before NYC was cleaned up, when it was in the verge of bankruptcy and a total complete mess. Garbage was all around, subways were terrifying and dirty and all the more so for a child growing up in the country who visited a couple times a year to see a show or go to a museum. So I get to go visit a Swiss city, Zurich and I was as dumbfounded as my niece was by the big church. Here was a very clean city, no garbage, clean waterways, no people behaving in a scary way. Everything was so clean! I had no idea that a city could be like this and was amazed to see such a sight! So many people and so clean!
The impression really remained with me, so much so that after almost 25 years of working in a cleaner New York City, I am really curious to see what my impression will be tomorrow. How do Swiss cities compare today with New York? Oh and like my niece, I discovered a special European food: croissants. I remember those being better than any in the US just as Grace loved her Italian gelato. Hope that memory really is correct.