If you were to fly to Europe in expectation of encountering “European culture,” you will find a diverse number of sub-cultures. For European culture is not easy to define. England, for example, has a large number of practising Christians, is an English-speaking democracy, and has fish and chips as its national dish.
Travelling eastward to continental Europe, we find the countries of France, Germany, Luxembourg, Russia, Turkey, Denmark, Italy, etc, all very different in many ways. While much of Europe speaks Indo-European languages, this category can be broken down into scores of related languages, ranging from Russian to Slavic, Italian to French, Germanic to Latin. Europeans speaking these languages do not share a common linguistic understanding.
In terms of government, while the European Union maintains its criterion of member states having to have a democratic government, this is not the case throughout all of Europe. While Western and Central European governments have democracies – such as Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands – this is not the case in Eastern Europe and Balkan countries, including Belarus, Ukraine, and Serbia.
Religion in Europe is also diverse in character. Russia contains a significant number of practising Russian Orthodox faithful; France has a growing number of Muslim adherents, owing to immigration from Islamic countries; Turkey is primarily a Sunni-Muslim country; and countries such as Austria and Poland have large numbers of practising Catholics. Religion in Europe is as diverse as it is throughout the whole of the rest of the world.
Europe’s cuisine, similarly, covers a diverse range of foods. While potatoes, bread, and eggs are staple fare in Russia, the Maltese love patizzi, the Italians eat pasta, the Hungarians eat goulash, and the Bulgarians eat a lot of yoghurt.
I’d say Sunday lunch would be more the national dish