European cafes or pubs are so great at establishing a leisurely culture where you feel welcome to hang out and stay a while. Bars and restaurants in America feel like a transaction. Get in, figure out what you want, consume it, pay and leave so we can cash in on the next customer. At no point in either Paris or Amsterdam did I feel the need to rush through my experience. It was nice. America has a well-documented unhealthy relationship with food and alcohol. And also a loneliness problem. Our continued descent into a faster paced, purely transactional culture has undermined the true reason for doing just about anything—including being social. Thoughts provoked by this article and the following images:
Amsterdam, 2024
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