I just spent a month in continental Europe, and the cafes and restaurants there are very different than in the US. In the US, restaurants want you to leave ASAP so they can turn the tables quickly. In Europe, they're perfectly happy to let you linger all day. I even became annoyed that nobody in a European restaurant would ever bring me the check. (Finally I learned to just get up and go to the register; this seemed a perfectly fine solution.)

Another commenter here said this was because US servers depended on tips, while tipping is not done in European restaurants. Maybe so; overall I like the European method much better.