I think we sometimes make too much of this whole US/UK differences thing.
Vast majority of it can be explained in a few hours and a demo flight or two with a good instructor to experience the whole services outside of controlled airspace thing and stuff like MATZs etc.
However as useful as PPRuNe can be for flight planning purposes if one is coming from the point of view of someone who has only just passed the PPL and has no experience of flying internationally in Europe the best thing to do is to sit down with a very experienced PPL who has plenty of VFR touring time and get him/her to take you through the process in its entirety. Once you have done that you will have a better understanding of whether it is a realistic endeavour or not.