Abstract : The following document is a report on my recent visit to several European universities and research centers. In it I will attempt two things. First, to convey personal impressions about the centers and their specific research organization. Second, to state a few general and specific observations collected during my visit, regarding computer science areas where work done at these centers may have the highest potential impact. Computer science research in Europe is of a different nature than that of the United States. While computer science work in this country concentrates on the development of advanced technologies at the boundary of basic research, similar work in Europe concentrates more on providing solutions to the everyday computational problems faced by the production sector of society (industry, government, commerce). The main difference with research in the United States thus lies in emphasis and directionality. The main emphasis of current research in the centers I visited is directed towards advanced software engineering tools (smart editors, sophisticated description languages), and computer-mediated smart communication systems both at the national level (government networking) and at the organizational level (office automation).