Geneva is number 2

The list of the best places in the world to live is out. Zurich is 1st, Geneva is 2nd and Vancouver 3rd.

My writer friend and I discussed the quality of life in Geneva over lunch in a pub-like restaurant with long planked wooden floors and couches surrounding tables. Because it was the noon rush we were seated on each side of the bar. She had salmon tartare and I had a poulet tangine with couscous and lots of veggies and we split the gateau du chocolate de la maison (which if the judges had eaten any would have pushed Geneva into the number one spot.)

We decided that over all it is the basic respect people show each other as part of the culture. The excellent transportation system, clean and safe streets, good education system, fine hospitals (and universal health care although paid for by the residents is affordable--but universal health care exists in all but one industrialized country so that couldn't have been a factor.). Of course we can find scandals and mistakes like anyplace but the best way to summarize Geneva in particular and Switzerland in general, it works better than it doesn’t and it works better than most. The judges who decided the best places in the world to live must have thought so for at least two of our cities.