If you said you don’t like “Euro games”[sup]1[/sup], please read this. If you are OP, please take this post as a note of caution. 
Games can be like solitaire, and games can be about resource management. But that is in no way representative of the modern game selection, including Euro games. The problem is that you have had bad curators picking bad games for you.
Note that “bad game” is relative to the audience. Your curators didn’t think about what you might find enjoyable. There are thousands of games out there, and certainly hundreds of very good ones. But if your curator only offers you mid-2000’s worker placement games[sup]2[/sup], you’re going to think that’s what all these games are like, and if you don’t like those, you’ll be missing out on the rest of the hobby.
Many factors lead to bad game curation. One is that the top ranked games at boardgamegeek are strongly biased to (a) heavy, complex games liked by those most into the hobby and (b) to a lesser extent by new games that bring some neat innovation but will not stand the test of time. (This has improved a bit as the hobby has grown, but devoted gamers who like the big and/or novel still dominate the voting.) Another is that a common game shelf will contain that first gateway game that the owner enjoyed playing at someone’s house, and then the next game that was recommended to them as something “they’ll also like since they like XYZ”, and so on, until they have a shelf with six games that are in broad strokes all quite similar.
So, having said that… You want interaction? How about Tigris & Euphrates or Quantum or the very light Lost Cities or Bohnanza. You want something that doesn’t feel like penny counting / optimizing? Well, any of those, or Dominion or Space Alert.
I repeat… thousands of games.
To the OP: You know your audience best, but I wouldn’t try to bite off too much in the session, and I’d err on the side of “too simple”. Too much new stuff in one session can be overwhelming and lead to a unenjoyable session. If the goal is to (long term) have them appreciate a broader menu of games, it’s much better to have several baby-step fun sessions than one big-leap session that turns them off entirely.
There is a rule of thumb in game design that you should introduce no more than one novel mechanic in a game. For games targeted at the hard-core gamer, more is okay, but for most games, this is a good rule.
The same holds for teaching games to new gamers. For someone whose only experience is with roll-n-move games, even an apparently simple game like Carcassonne can be a big step to take. There are a lot of new concepts to take in and attempt to work coherently with. I would focus less on trying to find a “Euro game” necessarily but rather a couple of games that are far enough removed from roll-n-move that they hint at the vastness and enjoyability of the hobby. Love Letters or Dixit – each barebones simple to learn, and good fun – introduces new game mechanics and new types of decisions that your friends may never have imagined could be part of a game. Dixit alone introduces scoring and ending-condition rules that are most likely entirely new to your audience. Individually these rules aren’t complicated, but they are building blocks that those who have a few games under their belt take for granted.
One big question is (a) whether you are the driver of all this, looking to guide your friends gently into the shallow end of the pool, convincing them that the water’s kind of nice, actually, or (b) whether they are all suited-up and eager to dive in, having been waiting for an opportunity to try something new in gaming. If it’s the former (which I’m guessing it is), then even Ticket to Ride is too much for a first session. It might be okay for a third session. If your friends are in category (b), then you can move a little faster, but only a little.
[sup]1[/sup] so named not because a given game is actually European but because of the European origin of the modern (past few decades) trend in game design innovation.
[sup]2[/sup] The worker placement mechanic took off in early 2000’s, evolved over the decade, then started fading back and settling into its position as one of several possible game mechanics (and often appearing in disguise).
