Re: Backpacking/cheap year of travel around Europe.
Pretty much throughout Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, Sweden), if you go to the tourist office in any town, they'll find a local family for you to stay with for a pretty cheap price. Except for the member of the Danish Nazi Party we got stuck with in Copenhagen, it was an interesting time. I highly recommend traveling the Norwegian coast by train, bus, ferry. Make it to the Lofoten Islands if you can in summer, you can stay in the fishing huts for like $5 a night. (They're actually more like a spartan lodge.)
For GB, you can often stay on farms or in pubs in the rural areas.
One essential book you'll want to get will be a Thomas Cook European Timetable. Invaluable for finding out how to get anywhere by train.
I also like Let's Go and Lonely Planet.
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