So one week ago, I’m at a dinner in Amsterdam and, inevitably, the topic of Greece and the euro comes up. A Dutch book editor goes into a tart little diatribe about how outrageous it is for Greeks to have gladly taken massive loans yet now bristle at being forced to repay at least part of the money. I ask if she thinks Dutch people resent that. The Dutch, along with the Germans and other “responsible” northerners, are the likely ones to have to make up for whatever countries like Greece don’t pay. “Yes, we resent it,” she says. I pose what seems a logical followup: “Do you want out of the euro?” She and the Belgian translator across from her look stunned and reply in unison: “Of course not!”

With the world wondering whether Greece will default on its debt and potentially bring about the end of the euro, and given how much withering press the currency has gotten lately, it’s worth pausing to consider what the euro means to the people who use it, and how that could relate to other big issues beyond the economy.

Probably the most common criticism of the euro is that it is a dead man walking because it relies on an economic union that is unsupported by a political union. History shows that this is a structural weakness, but it’s not necessarily unfixable. The Europeans who use the currency may not feel the sort of metaphysical connection to it that American have for the dollar, but they have become fond of it. And that fondness is worth dwelling on.

Certainly the fondness relies on an economic substructure. The euro opened southern European markets up for northern European countries; it allowed for infrastructure development in the south; it helped create the largest consumer market in the world. But that’s all in the background for most Europeans. Their real feelings of attachment draw from the small interactions that ride on the surface of life.

A Dutch colleague of mine, in his thirties, tried to explain that it’s somehow not just convenient but meaningful that when he goes to France or Spain he uses the same bills and coins as at home. More than a few Europeans have told me they started the euro experiment with skepticism but over the past decade—as the currency became a serious player, and also as travel got cheaper and easier—they have discovered that they have a European identity, which rides alongside their national identity.