Places to stay for recent college grad on a budget, looking to experience local culture

Austria will be a lot easier on a budget. The Salzkammergut area around Salzburg is beautiful. Gorgeous mountains & lakes.

That's super helpful, and sounds like exactly what I'm looking for. Thank you for your reply.

As you're travelling on a budget, you might consider getting an inexpensive HI Hostels membership - https://hihostels.com/ . They have Hostels all over Europe and much of the rest of the world, sometimes more than one in larger cities. Of course when staying in Hostels, there's a tradeoff in privacy, although some do have private rooms at reasonable cost. You could also check the Rick Steves guidebooks for lodgings in the places you'll be visiting, as there are facilities in different price ranges listed.

If this is your first trip to Europe, it would also be prudent to read Europe Through The Back Door, as that provides good information on how to travel well in Europe, such as rail skills, money, avoiding scams and theft, etc.

It would help if you could provide a bit more information on your plans. Is there anywhere other than Austria that you're interested in. Also how long will this trip be?

These days it will probably be hard to get away from "touristy areas" as Europe has been swamped lately.

In addition to Rick's book and while you're waiting to receive it, you could take a look at the following information online here.

Travel Tips for some basics and especially to learn about what you need to know that you didn’t know you need to know: https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips

Explore Europe for sections on the countries of interest to you: https://www.ricksteves.com/europe

Other useful non-RS websites include the Man in Seat 61 for train travel. I linked the sections on Switzerland and Austria to get you started.

Switzerland: https://www.seat61.com/train-travel-in-switzerland.htm

Austria: https://www.seat61.com/european-train-tickets-online.htm

For locals, culture and very low budget you can sleep very cheaply on farms, if that interests you.

https://www.myfarm.ch/en

under: sleep in the straw

https://www.myfarm.ch/en/sleep-on-straw#dontPreselectRegion=true&resultsPerPage=&tagIds=-124051646187934

Thank you all for your very helpful replies. I plan to go to Croaita, Montenegro, Albania, Italy and Greece. Also looking into Slovenia, Slovakia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.