Sometimes you really do need to smell the coffee. Arriving in Turin recently I made straight for the nearest bar and ordered a caffe macchiato. A charming woman served it up. I drank it standing at the counter. It was perfection. It cost EU1. Then I had another. The bar was absolutely ordinary, with fading tablecloths and some pensioners doddering in the corner. Such a cheap moment of happiness, obtainable in its pure form only in Italy, gets you wondering: are things really so bad in Europe? Life here is better than you'd ever know from watching TV news.
Undeniably, many Europeans are suffering. Levels of unemployment are the highest since records began in France (3.2 million) and Spain (six million). Bad European news mounts almost daily.
Europe is having a terrible time - except compared with probably every other continent and any time in history. Look at crisis-stricken Spain, for instance. The average Spaniard now lives to 82, seven years longer than in 1980. (Most countries where people can expect to reach 82 are European, says the World Health Organisation.) Today that average Spaniard's income, despite years of crisis, is still nearly double what it was in 1980. And across Europe, daily life has tended to get gradually more pleasant. For instance, crime rates have kept falling in most western countries despite the crisis. British streets haven't been this safe in more than 30 years, according to the UK's Office of National Statistics.