By year’s end, it was clear that outbreaks had slipped far beyond most governments’ capacity to control. By fall, it was clear that a new wave of infections had arrived on the continent. But schools mostly ended in a typical fashion, commuters returned to public transport and office life, and social life resumed in most of its forms, from dinner parties to after-work drinks. Tourism was still dampened, and masks were still a must.
While the United States was struggling through a scary second wave of coronavirus infections, Europe was celebrating the subsiding of its first. In this most unusual of years, Europe’s summer offered the strangest feeling of all: normality.
