When Alfred Roth hosted us at the University of Zurich, we were not only aware of Roth’s own architectural achievements, his world class Mondrian collection, but also the role of the school in furthering urban thinking.

As the Bauhaus in Deseau, Germany housed the foundation of modern architecture, so did Zurich and Giedion for urbanism.

In Zurich, we enjoyed the Sprungli Cafe on bahn Hofstr for chocolate cake and coffee.

We often slept in an inner city hotel and on a street with great sausages sold on an open cart, Christina likened this city to the way she remembers Leipzig before the war because of its size, design of buildings, commercial development, and scale.

At the airport, you can both board the train to Kitsbuhel, or take the shuttle into town, the Zurich airport is a terminal for both its inter-city railroad and inner city shuttle trains.

It was so convenient to fly from Khobar to Zurich and spend a few days before taking six hour mini- “cho-cho” train rides to Kitzbuhel.

The Airport has a shuttle, which takes you to the inner city in a jiffy.

The muti-level terminal also has lockers and showers and I often left our bags at the station, and with a small overnight bag walked across the bridge over Lake Zurich seeing many white swans as I made my way to our special little hotel. Because musical culture celebrates urbanity,

I enjoyed the small cameo opera theatres in Italy’s villages such as Lucca and Sienna where I saw performances played in the same costumes and same theatres as when composers such as Puccini first played their musical stories about the pomp, pageantry, and vulgarity of cities and the people that rule.

Such theaters were intimate, smelly, and seated less than 150 people. Often the audience would sing or hum along with the players and converse with the players as they recited or sang their well known lines.

It was the predictability, familiarity, and social aspects of the gathering that the audience came to see.

Each of the players was well known, as were the members of the crowd that gathered. Once again, it was like a café, plaza, or boulevard where one came to “see” and “be seen”.

I had no less joy for the Franz Lehar operettas in Vienna.

These quality events hearken me back to the breathtaking performances I enjoyed at New York’s “Radio City” especially Ravel’s Bolero and the Nutcracker preformed at the “City Center” during Christmas.

My childhood in New York was filled with stage shows and big screen movies at the Rialto, Strand, and Paramount theatres.

These were inevitably coupled with spending pennies in the penny arcades on forty second street, which were filled with Ripley’s believe-it-or-not , pin-ball, shooting, and fortune teller scoping machines.

On Faile Street, my favorite was the peep show card flick for a penny, which stood in front of the corner candy store and ice cream parlor.