After 10 weeks and nine countries, our adventure in Europe is coming to an end and my family has insisted that, in this column, all of us will share a little of what we've learned during our time away.

Naturally, we discovered that there are many things we like better about the United States than Europe. To name only a few: we miss the bigger houses (especially our own), smoke-free restaurants, lower sales taxes and the feeling of freedom that comes from living in a country as wide as a continent.

And, though I voted for Sen. John McCain, I find that it is both humbling and inspiring to read and hear, as I have repeatedly, that in electing an African-American to the presidency, the United States has done something that none of the Europeans I've spoken with can imagine any country here doing: We've put a person of a racial minority into the highest position of national power.

Some things we've seen in Europe, however, each of us would bring back to the States, if we could.

My 9-year-old son John demanded that we adopt European tort law. Well, actually, he rattled off a list of his favorite attractions -- the salt mine in Salzburg, the playground equipment in the grounds of a Hapsburg palace in Vienna and the mine tunnels in a German castle ruin -- and asked why we don't have anything like them in the U.S.

But what these sites have in common is that none of them would be allowed to operate in the United States for fear of ruinous personal injury lawsuits.

The mine, playground and ruins were all safe enough, if one followed the posted directions and took reasonable precautions against accident. But it seems that in the United States, accidents are never the fault of those whose carelessness causes them, but the fault of those who might have prevented them had they installed an extra safety railing, or added extra padding, or closed any sites that could not be made idiot-proof.

My 11-year-old daughter Margaret, by contrast, thinks that the best thing about Europe is that they have chocolate for breakfast. Of course, hot chocolate is served here as a breakfast drink. But that's just the tip of the chocolate bar. There is also pain au chocolate, a buttery, flaky, croissant-like pastry with a bar of dark chocolate in the center. Or indeed, any of a variety of chocolate cakes, which are regularly served for breakfast.

In fact, even the breakfast cereals here come with chocolate. Not just the sugar-laden chocolate flavored puffed cereals, but even the healthy cereals, like the whole-grain muesli cereal my kids are eating, come with shavings of 70 percent cacao chocolate. The stuff is advertised as conducive both to well-being and pleasure.

My wife, Susan, likes the trains. Apart from a couple of cab rides and two trips with friends, we haven't been in an automobile for 10 weeks. Everywhere we've gone, we've traveled by train. We've even been by train to towns such as Vernazza, Italy, and Bacharach, Germany that make Waterville seem a great metropolis by comparison. True, the trains in Italy were often late and rarely clean. They were, however, also very cheap.

The best lines, like the Eurostar from London to Paris, are more expensive, but also fast and luxurious. It takes about three hours to travel the roughly 300 miles from London to Paris; by contrast, the best American train, the Acela, takes the same amount of time to travel the approximately 200 miles between New York and Washington, D.C. Other routes, even the heavily traveled Boston-to-New York route, take much longer. And, of course, one can no longer get to places like Waterville or Augusta by train at all.

Finally, I admire the infrastructure of public life. Though Europeans obsessively consume bottled mineral water, their tap water is excellent. The cell phone service here is better, faster and more reliable than in the United States. Wireless Internet hotspots are easier to find. There are bike lanes and places to park bicycles securely and under cover.

Though one must often pay to drive in the urban center (as in London and Rome), there is less traffic and it moves faster. The train stations, particularly in northern Europe, are safe, clean and beautiful. The parks are full, not of drug dealers and homeless people, but of families and children.

Sadly, we don't expect to be among them again for quite some time.

Joseph R. Reisert is associate professor of American Constitutional Law and chairman of the Department of Government at Colby College in Waterville.