Before I visited Thailand, I always had this image that most thai people live in some kind of paradise near beach and crystal clear ocean, you know like in the Leonardo diCaprio movie "The Beach".

But no, in reality almost all of them live either in some dirty big city or rural rice farm areas, and have never even seen a beach or the ocean.

Don't think Europe is in a good place to visit at the moment with the freezing weather from what I am hearing on the news. Stay warm if your in the winter and cool if your in the summer goglings.

Yeah, that's why I'd like to get a better idea what part of Europe one wants to see, or are they going to zig zag around in different corners of it, living in several homes. With my work, a long time I've been e.g. once in Canada and twice in (southern) France... but during those trips I can't say I saw anything that interesting. E.g. during the second French trip, the motel was in a middle of boring looking fields, and there was some generic mall/supermarket nearby. Meh. Pretty much similar in Canada (Montreal area).

Also thinking of seeing how the "common Europeans" live... I presume e.g. common Spanish or Italians live quite differently how e.g. the Finns live, eating their pasta and pizza, singing and dancing laa-ti-daa all the time etc.

Go to Switzerland, I guess that is a safe bet. They have cuckoo clocks.

Depends what you want to experience. Even I'd be interested to try this in the winter (the glass igloo motel in northern Finland):

"real Europe" => I didn't know there was such a thing as "fake Europe" :o)

Joke aside, "postcards" are real, it's just that pretty pictures are taken on sunny days or that we put on some traditional clothes only 1-2 times per year but it's still part of the "real" life. Just for teasing if you have a twitter account:
https://twitter.com/MagicalEurope

Anyway, what you're looking for is "couchsurfing", there is a dedicated platform to it
https://www.couchsurfing.com/

I did some couchsurfing around 2000-2003 (that term didn't exist back then, it was just people meeting through forums). So from experience, you'll have to accept that you see things "partially" because of location and time constraints. Also, as I guess that you won't be coming just for the week-end, youtr host will probably be unemployed or a student otherwise they won't have time to drive you around during the week on daytime.

A cheap alternative are the youth hostels in every major cities but they're highly sollicited and well as it's collective dorm, it's kind of an acquired taste (I personnaly don't like them).

Also, you imply you'll travel through countries. If you wanna see the landscapes during your travels, take the train (it's also much less bothersome than planes which requires various check-ups). You can get a good discount on the ticket by getting Interrail passes as they're specifically tailored for people travelling through Europe:
http://www.interrail.eu/
Don't take the international bus lines, they're cheap but they highly suck.

Most importantly:

Your perception of Europe could highly varies depending of your background. Like if you go to Germany, there will be a huge perception difference if you're coming from Texas or Maine as landscape and climate are closer to one state than the other.
You should decide in advance what you REALLY wanna see of Europe because it highly varies from one region to another and depending of your likings. To take the example of France: you can go to Paris and do the usual tourism stuff, going in bars, etc. BUT you'll get into totally different worlds and lifestyles if you vistit the various countrysides like Alsace, Brittany or Corsica as each ones have their own customs, activities, landscapes, history and you have more chances to get to know the locals than in cities.

Attached pictures are kind of what you'll remember from your trips (well, that's what I remember ^o^) so if you have time/money constraint, you'll have to make choices instead of "trying to do everything at once" and ending up dissapointed because you didn't take the time to enjoy what your surroundings could offer.

I'd think you'd have much more luck using couchsurfing. Especially if this is a few years off - open an account, host some other people, build up some recommendations. It allows you to get to choose whom you want to meet up with, reading their profiles, and plot a route that way.

[Based on experience as a couchsurfer - but also long-distance cyclist.]

Right now: No. I'm too relatively new at posting here in the forum, and I still don't really know most people, including you. (Won't you come play mafia? That's my main sub-community here atm.)

But I've met literally hundreds of people from other forums I've been active in, had dozens of them stay over at my place (and probably stayed with another dozen myself), and oh yeah, married one. Reports of both mass killers and poor personal hygiene amongst the general online population have been greatly exaggerated.

So I figure that in a few years, assuming both of us stay active in this community, I'll have gotten a sense of knowing you, and my answer will be a yes. :) I'll be able to offer you the experience of living in a nice Dutch suburban town, where all the houses look the same (mine luckily slightly less so), and which is boring as hell, but with easy public transport connections to most of the major cities - and the beach, and the flower fields, and really, pretty much anywhere else in this country as well - to still see some of the "highlights" of the country as well.

What, really? POST A STORY.

:)

Last journey was moving back from UK after living there for 10 years, but took the long way around and went up one UK coast and down the other. Then via Ferry to France through Belgium, Netherlands and Germany. I'll only say as much that it is not legal to wild camp in most countries in the EU (Scotland and Scandinavia excepted) but you can (just please adopt a leave-no-trace philosophy if you do).

I don't know - what type of stories? I've covered most of Europe on bicycle and been to Israel/Palestine. I still want to go around the world on bicycle at least once, but alas ... funding that is a bit of a different ballpark.

And I... I... I saw Dmitri Gavrilov (winner of TransRussia) in person! That's got to count for something, right?
...
Fellow mortals, we're in the presence of a god.

...any type? I mean, every time I go cycling I end up frozen or arrested or chasing a cat across a federal highway. So it's epic in a way, Rugrats-style, but I can't even begin to imagine what real epic adventures involve.

For the moment I would say you can stay at my place when you want to visit my city (Leipzig, Germany). But who knows what my situation looks like in a few years, so please contact me again when your plans are a littel more concrete.

Hank's for the posglts, guys! We'll check out couch surfing. And Cat, those are some great recommendations.

I think we'll probably want to do some light hiking and spend time in small cities or villages. We have a few we want to visit, bit were still deciding.

I want to visit a specific place in France purely for crazy ancestorsal reasons and gog headquarters and probably visit a few friends who moved to Europe. Otherwise, we may just chill.

If we take our children, we'll probably get an apartment in a centrally located town that we want to spend a lot of time in. A place with good transportation, good food, and kind people. And then make short trips from there.

If we go without children, we'll probably spend a few days in each town and them make our way to another. We'll almost definitely go by train. Thanks for the recommendation of the intereuropean rail.

Mortal danger, usually.
Try crossing your border/DMZ to the north ;-)

Eee gads. It's not that difficult really - and I am certainly by far not the only one doing this. You just (roughly) go the direction you want to go in and pedal. And push the bike uphill, too, and curse a lot while doing that, and then go downhill quite quickly and curse probably even more. Loaded bikes are heavy. Most round-the-world cyclists don't have much experience of long-distance touring when they start, they just do it. The people I am in awe of are folks like Louise Sutherland who made it round the world back in the 1940s on a three speed bicycle and a heavy trailer (women are perfectly able to do journeys like that on their own), or Joff who is at the moment going around the world on a Penny Farthing the second time, or Ed Pratt who is doing a world tour on a unicycle at the moment (he's most of the way through China, now). Or Marija Leijerstam who was the first person to cycle the Antarctic (crossing the South Pole) back in 2014.

Generally, though - it's just something that we have lost a bit as a culture - people used to cycle quite long distances frequently back before cars became the thing you just had to have - and they did it with much less efficient technology back then. Same with walking long distances. [I've done a bit of that, too.]