Ok, now that I'm done hijacking my own thread, I'm finding the responses here interesting, and somewhat in line with my own experiences living in Belgium.
What really struck me, living in Belgium, was how homogeneous the social classes were. People wore similar clothes, drove similar cars, and had similar diets, vacations, and "stuff." Wealth, when it showed up, showed up in housing, family lineage, and where one spent one's vacation. There wasn't a lot of disparity between the classes, because the rich didn't seem to spend their money extravagantly, and the poor spent their money on quality items, just few of them.
It was an interesting education for a US teenager. But, I had no idea how retirement worked there (still don't), so it's interesting to hear from those who have more pertinent experience.
And as for shopping once a week -- we went to the baker's every day (by bicycle) and the greengrocer's and market once a week, because market day was only once a week. Our meals were simple and repetitive, but I loved what we ate. (Basically, meat, boiled potatoes and an in-season vegetable). In fact, my whole year there was fairly simple but very rich. It sounds like this was, perhaps, a very typical western European experience.
