This year, I saw Old Europe with new eyes. The economic and energy crises make Europe's sustainability look practical, not quaint or historic.

What is most striking about life in the cities I visited with a group of students in May -- Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Bruges -- is that they never fully adapted themselves to the automobile. Instead, people walk, hop on metros or trams, or bicycle to work, to shop, to go out for the evening. The effects are striking. As we Americans create car-free days, build bike lanes, refurbish city neighborhoods, rethink our flight to the suburbs and resurrect our railroads, we might look across the Atlantic to find that Europeans are already there.

Automobiles have not dictated planning and policy in Europe and, as a result, people live differently. Instead of driving to big-box stores or supermarkets, they shop on their way home from work and give over their streets to local merchants. Neighborhoods are awash with the sounds and smells of a more personal kind of commerce:

Fish markets that have opened for daily business for 500 years.

Small bakeries that set out crusty loaves of brown bread and buttery pastries at dawn's first light.

Chocolatiers who craft sweet heaven in various shades and shapes of brown.

Fruit and flower merchants who spread their wares on the sidewalks like sensuous mating displays.

Flea markets where old dealers set out place settings of Limoge china beside African immigrants selling masks from Cameroon and Tanzania.

•

European cities never lost that sense of community we are now struggling to recapture. When people are not enclosed in private cars, common spaces spring up naturally where they stop in a cafe or on a park bench. While Americans were moving to suburbs without sidewalks, Europeans continued to cover theirs with tables and chairs where they linger long in conversation.

Between the crowded sidewalks and city streets, bicycles whiz by. Their chirping bells sound a deceptively cheerful warning to pedestrians to clear their paths. Bicyclers rarely slow down and usually win the constant street war they fight with cars and pedestrians.

Bicycles are a serious means of transportation in Europe, especially in the flat lowlands countries. In Amsterdam, the bicycle capital of Europe, 750,000 residents own nearly 600,000 bicycles. They use them with an unselfconscious creativity.

In the morning, parents escort children to school, riding beside them or carrying them in baskets or pushcarts. Businessmen in suits and ties and women in high heels and skirts ride to work with brief cases strapped to the back-fender luggage racks and cell phones clutched to their ears. Grandparents usually -- but not always -- pedal at a somewhat slower pace. Pets and babies bounce along in all sorts of contraptions. In the evening, couples go on dates, riding side by side and holding hands.

One side effect of this self- propulsion is fitter bodies. Broad backsides abroad -- with few exceptions -- belong to American tourists. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimates that 66 percent of Americans are overweight or obese. In Europe Union countries, the percentage of overweight adults is about 30 percent.

•

Good mass-transit systems provide Europeans with other cheap alternatives to driving. City buses, trams and metros move people quickly and efficiently. In the Paris metro, electronic signs announce when the next train will arrive -- rarely more than two minutes after the one you just missed. Amsterdam discourages driving by charging exorbitant parking fees (4 euros per hour) inside the city but providing ample parking outside the city, along with a fistful of public-transit tickets, for 6 euros per day.

Comfortable trains ease travel from one city to another and cut carbon emissions. On high-speed trains, gazing straight out at the blurring landscape is dizzying, but the ride is smoother and more efficient than even the most luxurious automobile. We rode from Paris to Brussels in less than half the three-hour driving time.

Of course, there are many things about Old Europe Americans would not want to emulate or envy. Living in these cities is expensive, and some have pushed poor and resentful immigrants into seething suburbs that occasionally erupt into riots. But as we rethink the many costs of cars, both financial and environmental, we have much to learn from cities that never put them at the heart of their lifestyle.