Couchsurfing and bush camping indeed.
Some countries/areas have dedicated wild camping spots

E.g. Bivakzone - Overzichtskaart
and https://sites.google.com/site/paalkampeerders/kaart

For camping I have two strategies:
1) camp somewhere out of sight where nobody knows you're there
2) camp with permission in a location with social control (e.g. on the village square)

Never had any problems (except from the once in while friendly forester urging us to break up camp at 6 a.m.)

Eating: I often prepare lunch in a thermos can. bring some rice (oats, patatoes, whatever...), vegies and oil to a boil, poor in the thermos, and it will cook while you're on the way. Get's you a nice hot lunch for pennies.

As said above, cooking your own food doesn't expose you to local quisine as much, but neither does McDo or many road side restaurants. I'm sort of forced because of allergies. And yes, I hate having to miss out on that.

I would concur with some others here. If you do 100% of your own cooking, you will miss out on a huge part of what makes seeing all these wonderful places unique and terrific. I'd suggest modifying the trip to include more local foods if possible. I don't know if that entails increasing the budget for food, shortening the trip to put more money towards eating at some restaurants, shops, and vendors, getting couch surfing hosts to cook for you, or what. One of my favorite parts of being other places is eating all the different foods areas specialize in.

Yeah, its long time until 2018.
The reason to plan so far ahead is to get the chance to save some days of from work.

Im planning to do this in may or june.

Since reading all comments above i have done some research for hostels and airbnb places.
Also looked up the couchsurfing site.
The CS sounds quite interesting for my idea of seeing the real europe on budget.
That kind of living gives me also the chance for meeting new people/friends on my way through europe.

Get a simple petrol stove, you'll always have fuel with you in bikes tank.

The budget
 

bierHi ya
I am looking at doing this sort of trip myself.
I can see it's all about the budget, but can you inform me on what sort of budget to be looking at.
IE
From the cheapest side of life.
Form living it up bier

Thank you for any advice you can give me

30-200€/day

At the lower end it does depend on how much you are willing to seek alternatives for. You could (for example) ride a 125 that does 100+mpg and err ... get your fuel at midnight, sleep in the open and cook your own food from stuff you brought with you (or starve). That would be pretty cheap (if somewhat restricted).

With €30 /day you'd be able to go legit - €10 for fuel, €6-8 for basic municipal campsites in France and the rest for supermarket purchases.

At the high(er) end €100 - 120 /day would get you a passable hotel, a tank of fuel and a choice of restaurants. Beyond that it just means more or better. Once you've gone past the €2-300 /day mark maybe you should be leaving the bike behind and taking the Ferrari :rofl:

Exactly bier

yup, camping is exciting

Wild camping may be cheap but it tends to make you feel like you're just 'passing through'. You don't meet anyone except gas station cashiers, you cook food you've brought with you, and you spend your evenings out of town away from people trying to avoid being spotted.

Travel costs EUR .05-.10 per km for fuel (depends on your engine, riding style and fuel price) not counting maintenance and wear and tear, so for example if you were doing 200kms in a day you would need to budget EUR 10-20.

Compared to that cheap hotels and cafe meals aren't big bucks. Maybe consider alternate nights camping and hoteling? I know what you mean about the GS and credit card brigade and I understand the desire not to break the bank but I think you'll miss a lot if all you see is the road and a few woods.

I agree that constant stealth camping can be isolating, but for me I think even with 5x the budget I would still travel in that same fashion. There's a bit of a trick to it, but it is possible even in the densest parts of Europe. However, though I had many magical stealth campsites in Europe the majority were purely places to sleep. When I am travelling alone in Europe I will pay to sleep only one or two nights per months, the rest is couches or stealth camping.

The cheapest way would be wild camping I think. You will save a ton of money on it.
Also you should buy a good GPS and always try to avoid traffic to save your fuel.

Not really, if you got caught, you could camp 10-20 days for the price of fine.

Well, I'm not so sure I would agree with you on everything you said.

For sure, I would not want to have a brand new R1200GSA with all the latest accessories, because everyone would then mistake me for a German dentist.

But as for the fancy dinners and nice hotels, what's wrong with that?

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On a somewhat more serious note, to attempt to answer the question that the original poster raised:

Hostels are available in many communities, they offer you a warm and dry place to sleep & have a shower and meet other like-minded people for a very low cost. Camping out is fine, but after a few days, you might want to take a break and stay in a hostel for a change.

You can spend as much or as little as you want on food. For budget planning purposes, consider that whatever you spend on food when you are at home will be the absolute minimum you can get away with when you are on the road. You might want to increase your 'at home' food budget by perhaps 100% to allow for the fact that you won't be able to cook (at a campsite or hostel) every meal that you eat.

Michael