We took a trip to the Baltic around 10 years ago. My favorite was "boring" old Denmark. Copenhagen is the loveliest city I've ever seen. Particularly for a big city. I'd tell the Danes the same as a guy once told me, "Keep doing what you're doing".
One of the cities we visited was Rostok. It's in (Eastern) Germany and had, at that point, only been out from under Communism for 20 years. It's a mid-sized town. About the size of Lexington. A university town, too. It was fantastic. They had really shaken off the dullness that Communism is famous for. I liked Helsinki, too, but not a single word on any signs looked like what I remember words looking like. Finnish is a really weird language.
We got to Stockholm relatively late in the day and we didn't get to see much of that famously wealthy city. But I've since taken to using Google Earth to explore it. You can plop that little yellow map homunculus down at any point that has a blue street highlight to see what street level looks like. I've never seen a nasty looking area of Stockholm.
Google Earth is the next best thing to a vacation if you ask me. I recommend it over travel guides for all of your What Does the Outside World Look Like needs.
If the US were suddenly rendered unlivable, I'd definitely try out Denmark over any other country we've ever gone to. (Most of Western Europe.)
As for the question of how we did it: we're both retired. We took our trip on my wife's retirement bonus.