Knew a bloke who bought a share in a vintage tail-dragger Aeronca. He learned to fly (and hand-start)
Sounds familiar... I did essentially the same thing ten years ago. Hand propping was lesson number one. I still have the plane now as I had no particular reason to sell it when I bought a faster aircraft. Annuals cost me $200 in labor and probably $50-100 in parts, monthly storage works out to be at no additional cost because I'm renting the hangar space anyway. Liability Insurance is probably the biggest added cost at something like $600/year.
Obviously not everybody gets the same pleasure from owning stuff, but I'd have had little interest in flying if the goal was anything other than owning the aircraft... that was the primary motivation. It seems to me the biggest reason not to do the same in Europe would be the seemingly unavoidable ties to a flight school, even if you own the aircraft. My instructor was a young instructor with a lot of experience who taught me pretty well for $40 per training flight... because he wanted to, and felt it was a good way to support the local vintage aircraft scene.