My short one month long backpacking trip Europe ended with visiting just 6 major European cities. Although many would feel my time was very short, I personally though that was definitely enough time to get a good feeling of what Europe had to offer and has to offer for potential future visits. It's amazing in such a seemingly small continent that there can be so much cultural differences between each country.
Although there were tons of different languages in Europe, I never felt like I really struggled with the language barrier. A lot of European languages (like French and Italian) are very similar to English and so it was quite easy to guess what common words meant. German was an exception as German words were so long and unpronounceable that I just gave up. Most Europeans could speak multiple languages and nearly all of them knew conversational English. Paired with a phone and a bit of politeness, interpretation was a breeze.
There were a couple of stores and chains that were common in each city that let me know I was probably in a nice part of town. Pret-a-managers (which are apparently nicer Starbucks? I have no idea still), Starbucks, and Illy are all the popular chain coffee shops. Other than a couple of typical fast food joints (McDonalds...), most of the restaurants and other coffee shops were local joints. It was nice knowing that rampart international consumerism hadn't completely devoured all western cities.
I love the euro. The pound, on the other hand, was very annoying to deal with. That about sums that up.
Traveling between cities was efficient. I had the option of taking cheap buses (I'm talking dirt cheap), trains, and flights. I opted to spend most of my traveling on flights as they were the most cost efficient time and cost wise. Buses took an entire day to travel in-between cities and trains were more expensive and took longer too. Flying cost-efficient airlines kinda.... suck. Being jammed in the middle seat for every single flight was terrible but the price I had to pay to save about ten bucks to choose your seat (I try to be cheap). Constant delays and crap customer service was just some things I had to suffer through for incredibly cheap flights.
Hostels were either hit and miss. Some hostels I stayed at had amazing traveler interaction and others were as dead as a graveyard. However one common occurrence was that they were all very clean. I've definitely stayed a nicer hostels for the same price though.
Taking tours is something I really don't like doing as I like to explore cities at my own pace. However, Sandelman's New Europe Tour (or something like that) is highly recommended. They have tour guides in basically every major European city and the best thing is that they are completely free! The catch is is that at the end of the tour, you can tip your tour guide as much as you think that tour was worth. As a broke backpacker, I've mastered snaking off at the end of each tour.
Europe left a great impression on me. The deeply rich history and ancient cities (well ancient compared to USA cities) are fascinating to learn about. I wish I had visited smaller European cities and other larger countries, but that's definitely on the menu for the next trip. This trip was more of a small appetizer platter (I do like food).