As previously mentioned, I’ve recently moved back to central New York after living in and around Washington, DC, for just over six years. During that time in the Big City, I got used to a number of things that I ended up taking for granted. Living and commuting every day into the heart of the city made me expect certain things, and while I know things like dealing with a packed train or having hundreds of restaurant options aren’t true for everyone in the world, I came to expect them for myself.

    And now that I’m in Syracuse, I have to re-learn and re-get-used-to so much. Such as:

• Ample free parking
• Being able to get anywhere in under a half hour
• Wearing a coat all the time
• My car’s mpg easily staying above 25
• The fact that small cities have just as many things to do as big cities
• Politics isn’t always on the forefront of everyone’s minds (or maybe it is and I just don’t know anyone yet)
• I want to (and could) be at Wegmans every hour of the day
• Things are more relaxed
• People are friendly and strangers make conversation with me
• Non-major league sports are just as fun
• All these license plates are from the same state (that was something I never thought would be odd to me)

Just a thought for now. I admit, there’s no major revelation here, but it’s really interesting to me just how different (and yet…not different?) small city life is from big city life.