I travel to Europe about once a year and I've noticed they're far behind the US in terms of vegetarian options. In the US it's been easy to get a high quality, vegetarian meal at almost any restaurant for at least a decade (edit: at least in metro areas; perhaps rural areas are different, although I haven't noticed this personally). Meanwhile in Europe it's almost impossible to get anything resembling a full meal. Like you say, it's usually simply a meal based around meat with the meat removed. I hope things are getting better over there.