Why Americans Love Europe

The first thing that strikes an American visiting Europe is how improbably tiny everything is—not least Europeans themselves. Look at them: driving their puny Smart cars, sleeping in their minuscule hobbit beds, wearing size-XS shirts from Zara. The entire Continent is miniature-scaled: tiny soda bottles, tiny subway cars, tiny garbage trucks. It’s like Legoland with cigarettes. Can you blame us for wanting to collect every precious little piece?

Until recently, only prep-schoolers and suburban four-year-olds played soccer in America. In Europe it’s a $21.6 billion sensation, and the only industry that doesn’t require a government subsidy. Whole 90,000-seat stadiums fill up with riotous, bloodthirsty fans. To nonbelievers “the beautiful game” resembles nothing more than an unsupervised kindergarten recess: OK, everybody just run around for an hour and a half, and occasionally stop to hug! Olé, olé, olé! But for Europeans—far more sensitive to subtlety and nuance—those 90 minutes are the most sacred and profound of the week.

The birthplace of Camus, Beckett, and Ionesco, Europe has always been at home with absurdity. Nowhere is this proud legacy more evident than in the way European men dress. Seriously, have you ever seen an Italian in his native environment, left to his own sartorial devices? He will pair a Day-Glo-orange cycling jersey with a checked suit (double-breasted, of course) and ivory suede moccasins. He will swathe himself in a veritable gelato shop of pastels. He will make Björk look pragmatic. Yet around the planet, Italian men are revered for their fashion sense. Why? Because no matter how ridiculous they look, they are impervious to embarrassment. When you own your goofiness as Europeans do, the world is your catwalk.

Traveling to Europe is a fine way to expose your children to history, art, foreign languages, and prostitution. I was 10 when my parents first took me to Amsterdam. Walking to dinner the first night we passed a lady sitting in a window, dressed in what I took to be a not-very-convincing Catwoman costume. On her lap was a fluffy Siamese cat. A sign in the window said “$75 USD.”

“Can we buy him, Dad? Can we?” I begged. “Canwecanwe?”

“She’s not selling the cat,” he replied. And that was that.

They put topless women in newspapers. They sunbathe in the nude. They’ve kept Silvio Berlusconi in office for 10 years. French President Nicolas Sarkozy married much younger former model, Carla Bruni—and both are rumored to have had affairs. In Europe, randiness is nothing to feel bad about. If anything, it’s a mark of sophistication. This is why, in French movies, devastatingly attractive 19-year-old women are always falling head-over-Chloé-heels for slovenly old sex-obsessed alcoholics. Who cares if they reek of pastis and stale tobacco? They’re so confident! So virile! So captivating!

Having endured all manner of privation throughout history, Euros learned to survive by sifting through the bottom of the food chain. Hence their vestigial preference for hooves, tails, spleens, kidneys, and other odd bits. But here’s the rub: everything they cook is crazy-delicious. Even the calves’ intestines. You will never eat better calves’ intestines in your life. Nor better boiled sheep’s head, nor pressed ox tongue. The secret? Fantastic butter, and lots of it. Also? Everything tastes great when you’ve been drunk since noon.

Europeans love whiling away the day at outdoor cafés. On the sidewalks of Athens, Marseilles, Milan, and Barcelona, you’ll see adult males—on the small side, sure, but by all other measures “grown-up”—doing nothing all afternoon but sipping espresso and reading newspapers/pornography. (The incredible thing about Europe is that, aside from soccer players and prostitutes, nobody else seems to have a job. If they do, they’re on strike.)

Then again, if you lived in Europe, you’d sit around drinking espresso all day too. The coffee is phenomenal. Even the skeeviest autostrada rest stop will serve you a perfect ristretto. Which is convenient, since coffee is about the only thing you can drink there if you don’t want to get plastered. Take it from me: There is nothing refreshing about anise-hazelnut soda.

Europe gets flak for being expensive—and, granted, it can require a planeload of cash to get there in high season. But once you arrive, flying from Paris to Berlin costs less than a dinner and movie back home. Eighty cents will buy you the best baguette you’ve ever had. Wine is cheaper than orange juice. In many respects, Europe is a bargain. It’s just that the pricing structure is all back-assward, so things that ought to be affordable (a tank of gas; the London subway) cost an arm and a leg, while things that ought to be costly (tobacco; foie gras; health care) are dirt cheap or outright free.

So go on: smoke, drink, and gorge on foie gras with abandon. Join the throngs at a football match or a labor strike. Ogle topless pinups with impunity. Buy your-self a pair of pistachio-colored Italian sneakers. It’s Europe! Honestly, why go anywhere else?

Peter Jon Lindberg is T+L’s editor-at-large.