I was in Switzerland, where the milkman delivered a “freshly squeezed” tin pail of milk every morning. My mother was crazy about it, but would not let us kids drink unpasteurized milk even in super clean Switzerland, so we got the pasteurized stuff from what passed for a supermarket.
I lived in Southeast Asia as an adult for awhile, land of no dairy products (and no refrigeration), so I can appreciate your milk experience. I got a little UHT milk from my military buddies a couple of times while there — better than powdered milk, but a long way from the real stuff. I really missed cheese there.
I got used to European style food, and being a kid, loved the sweets in Europe — which are not nearly so sugary as our sweets. To this day, American sweets are cloyingly over sweetened to me.
My wife, who went with my mother on a trip to Finland (Land of The Elves, my brother calls it) remarked on this the other night at a party-the woman she visited, who was a foreign exchange student in the Seventies with my family, gave her two kids “a candy” every night, and they could choose one out of a special drawer.
Only one.
And it was good chocolate, not like Hershey’s.
Different approach, for sure.