BARCELONA, Spain -- The gas pump whirled at the filling station along the A9 highway in France and stopped at a figure that meant ... $60?!

Actually, that wasn't bad. The compact Ford Focus rental took only three quarters of a tank. Of regular. It's just that each gallon cost the equivalent of $5.

High gas prices got you down? Trying to drive less? Wish you could ditch the whole four-wheel lifestyle -- the gas bills, the car payments, the insurance premiums, and that jerk tailgating you on Interstate 279?

Welcome to Europe, where sticker-shock gas prices have been part of the landscape for a long time, and where most people have adjusted by simply giving up on cars.

Europe has only 45 cars for every 100 people, compared to 85 in the United States (although ownership is rising, especially in the increasingly prosperous and formerly communist countries of eastern Europe). Americans not only own one-quarter of the world's 535 million cars, they also drive them a lot, racking up twice as many miles per year as Europeans.

For expatriate Americans living in Europe, stories about high gas prices often lead to the inevitable question.

"You don't have a what?" mortgage broker Michael Geire asked during a holiday gathering in the Washington, D.C. suburbs last December. "How can you possibly live without a car?"

A man named Dom Nozzi provided an explanation for the furrowed brows and dubious looks that always seem to accompany such questions from Americans. An urban planner for the city of Gainesville, Fla., Nozzi wrote the 2003 book, "The Road to Ruin," which concludes that America's car obsession makes cities less livable.

"Without a car in America today," he said in an interview, "one is looked upon as a weirdo. A bizarre anachronism. Sadly, it is now nearly impossible to live a fulfilling life in America without a car. Without a car, too many sacrifices have to be made. Loss of independence. Loss of time. Loss of ability to get to certain places, do certain things, or work in certain jobs."

Life in Falls Church, Va., just outside Washington, used to seem barely survivable with four cars. When one went down, life fell apart, with parents and kids forced to double up and rejigger schedules to get to work, school, shopping, soccer games and other activities.

But when the rubber hits the road in Europe, it usually involves shoes landing on pavement. And most American transplants feel like Larry Steck.

"Miss owning a car?" he asked in amazement, citing the pleasure of not worrying about gas prices or traffic hassles. "Absolutely not."

Steck is a retired U. S. Army colonel from Michigan who moved here three years ago with his wife, Linda.

"Some afternoons in the U.S., the 20-mile drive home took an hour and a half," noted Chris Beeler, who moved here last August from Portland, Ore., with wife, Natasha. "By the time I got home, I was wound up and stressed out."

Commuting home now means 15 to 20 minutes by foot and train, and Beeler uses the time to wind down from his job as a 6th grade language arts teacher.

Christine Scharf found a world of difference between going car-less in the United States and Europe. She's a computer specialist from Flanders, N.J., who has lived here for years and has never owned a car.

"In the U.S., I felt like you cannot get anywhere without a car," she said. "Nothing is located conveniently for walking because the world expects you to have a car."

Most people in Europe don't need cars because most cities here were built before cars became popular, Nozzi said. In-town areas are compact, designed for walking and mass transit. They are densely populated with mixed-use residential and commercial multi-story buildings. Daily destinations like work, school, shopping, cultural activities and health care are close together. Streets are modest in size with little space devoted to roads or surface parking.

"The design was intended to make people happy, instead of cars," Nozzi said. "This explains why these European communities remain such fantastic places that millions of non-Europeans love to visit as tourists."

Here's a brief neighborhood tour from an apartment near the intersection of Passeig Manuel Girona and Capita Arenas, two miles from the center of Barcelona:

Walk out the front door, and there's a bus stop, with others just around both corners. A Metro station is a three-minute walk down Capita Arenas. The equivalent of 75 cents takes you anywhere in the city. Sants Estacio, the main railroad station, a gateway to anywhere in Spain, Europe or the world, is a four-minute Metro ride away. Trains from Sants Estacio stop right inside the terminal at Barcelona's international airport.

Taxis are cheap and on patrol day and night. Nobody hesitates to hail one for hauling big purchases. Chairs or carpets are tied to the roof.

All of life's necessities, however, can be reached by foot. That's why Europeans make about 45 percent of their daily trips by walking and biking, according to the European Conference of Ministers of Transport, compared to 7 percent in the United States.

SA Champion supermarket is a minute's walk and a competing Caprabo market beckons five minutes up the street. A huge El Corte Ingles department store, three minutes by foot, has a complete supermarket, as well. Most will deliver a shopping cart of food to a home or apartment within an hour for a nominal fee.

In or bordering on this single city block are a half dozen restaurants and cafes, three bakeries, several small grocery stores, a 24-hour pharmacy, two churches, a health club, medical and dental offices, two hardware shops, two news stands, two florists, a travel agent, a palm-tree lined municipal park with a playground, automatic teller machines that also sell tickets to concerts and other events, three banks, a barber shop and beauty parlor, adult and children's clothing stores, an optician, a dry cleaners, even a clothing shop for cats and dogs.

Linda Steck said the people-oriented urban design of Barcelona made for a smooth transition to life without a car.

"I buy a 50-trip bus-Metro-train pass once a month for about $30, which is less than it would cost to fill up my car for one week," she said. "We walk extensively, which is very healthy for us."

Better health -- physical and mental -- is a common theme of the car-less crowd in Europe.

"Walking incorporates exercise, naturally and almost effortlessly, and it is delightful to stop by the markets and enjoy the beauty of the city without ever having the frustration of being stuck in traffic," Scarf said. "When my mother visited, she was fascinated with the idea of walking from place to place."

Chris and Natasha Beeler each lost about 10 pounds within a few months after switching from tires to shoe leather. The librarian at their school shed "two dress sizes" -- about 20 pounds -- and has nightmares of gaining it all back when she eventually returns to a drive-everywhere life in the United States.

"I've lost weight, I feel better, and I'm saving hundreds of dollars that went to the car," said Candace Crites, who has traveled by foot and bicycle since moving last year to Rotterdam in the Netherlands from suburban Washington, D.C.

Ex-pats also marvel at the amount of human contact that takes place when cars are removed from their lives.

After a few months commuting by foot and bike, Robert Overson realized that he had been locked in a steel-and-glass isolation capsule while driving everywhere in his native Santa Cruz, Calif.

"While walking you have a tendency to slow down and see things around you, really see them, instead of zooming by," said Overson, a special education teacher.

"I think the biggest advantage is the sense of community that walking builds" Linda Steck said. "There are 1.5 million people in Barcelona and we have never gone out without seeing somebody we know. Our home is in St. Joseph, Mich., which has 12,000 people, and in two months last summer we saw two people we knew in the supermarket. Why? Everybody drives."

American transplants in Europe occasionally do miss their wheels when they take those rare weekend trips to places that are not easily accessible by train or bus. Then it's time to rent a vehicle, and to head back out on the road to ruin.

Aside from the high-priced gas, Europe features expressway tolls nearly six times those of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and parking lots that cost $18 a day. Not to mention the occasional jerk tailgating on the A9.