If all goes well, I should be getting my master's degree on January 11th. Instead of jumping straight into work, I want to take a few months off to travel, since I have done school for 6 years straight after high school without ever slowing down.

I really want to travel through Europe, but I don't know how to make my idea of the plan happen. I want to hit a few countries, Poland and Germany so I can see my family (would like to explore there a little as well). Then I would love to see all of Italy, and then I would also like to see England/Ireland. I would love to see just about any other country, but those are the ones I am most interested in. Those Scandinavian countries would be cool too.

I have heard of those organized trips through a travel agency, where you go across Europe over the course of a few months. But I heard those are for one overpriced, and two, pretty miserable because you spend a ton of time in the tour bus. I have also heard of programs where you stay with a family over there, and they are in charge of making sure you see what you want to see. The problem with that is that I would like to visit multiple places. A friend of mine stayed with a family in Romania, and then with them went on vacation to Greece, however, that seems unlikely.

How could I get the information to make this trip happen? I would prefer to get a great value trip for a low price so I don't go too much in debt trying to get this to happen. But at the same time I don't want to be miserable and sleeping on a bus every single night. Does anyone know what I could do to get more information on this?

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