What Makes Europe Better?

Even without a subscription, you can get the gist of Chris Arnade's Free Press article. 

Something about style, something about elegance, something about appreciation for the everyday things... yes, we have all heard things like this for decades.  Collectively, we have heard them as long as there have been Europeans in the New World. "English goods were ever the best," said a character in The Story of A Patriot, shown at the Visitor's Center of Colonial Williamsburg since the 1960s. 

Yet it is comparing apples and oranges.  We have charming comfortable breakfast places like the one he described in Italy.  We have a fair number of them.  In vacation places. When we choose them for breakfast, we like them very much, and for the same reasons. The slowed pace of vacation breakfast in America is similar tho the slowed pace for Americans when they vacation in Italy. But generally we don't choose them, because we are going somewhere and we value our time, down to smaller intervals than are valued in much of Europe. 

Europeans complain about McDonald's and the like, but they go to them. They like clean rest rooms, heat and air conditioning, a reliable menu, low prices, just like everyone else.  If there were a big demand for outdoor Italian cafes with bakery, you can guarantee someone would build it.  The closest thing we have to that are cafes inside malls or hotel-based shopping centers We like those fine, but often people want a quick bagel or croissant to go, to have something nice at work.

In most Dunkins in New England, there are regular groups of old guys who meet together for breakfast weekly or even daily. They sit and talk, they don't hurry.  

It's only a slight exaggeration to say that we like this slowed down elegant unpressured life wherever we like.  Because it's vacation, and we like vacation.