Backpacking/cheap year of travel around Europe.

[MrMon]

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.