Yeah, I think the average European probably takes more time off than even Americans that think they take a lot of time off.

We get 32 days + public holidays, so you could take something like 7 weeks off with careful planning. Most people do. Because most people do, it isn't looked down upon at all.

A friend at a US firm said they told him if someone could take 3 weeks off then clearly the company didn't need them and there wouldn't be a job to come back to. Here it wouldn't be anything unusual at all.

i remember years ago my wife's friend (we're in US, she was in the UK) commented about how crappy US 'vacation' policies were. She'd been at a place for ... several years, and now had seniority for... at the time it was 11 paid weeks off. It seemed a bit excessive, because it didn't include some national holidays as well, so... basically she had > 3 months 'off' every year. The biggest problem she/they had was trying to figure out stuff to 'do' during that time (visited us in the US for a bit). I think another issue was trying to coordinate her 'time off' with her husband (IIRC he 'only' got 8 weeks paid vacation).