I'm in a really unusual position, having visited Europe for work during the pandemic, visiting London and Berlin. I hate to break it, but life in those places ain't so different, people seem to imagine zombies in the street or something, not so! In London you need to order food or drinks via an app at your table, which was mostly outside, in Berlin masks were being aggressively enforced and you must scan in at bars. I was issued with N95 masks to use and constantly used alcohol hand cleaner.
Your view of life in Europe may have been coloured by the period of the pandemic measures you were present for. There has been a stay at home order in England for the last 5 months, restaurants could offer a click and collect service only with no alcohol permitted to be served. This was after their government lifted their restrictions over the summer of 2020, encouraged a “normal” life and sparked a second wave that gave them the highest death rate per capita in the world in January and brought their healthcare to the edge of collapse - the primary danger of COVID at the macro level. The lockdown measures in place from January reversed that and now the UK is on a good path to recovery thanks to their vaccine rollout.