Tourist visa are good for 90 days usually, you can ask for extensions once you get close to the end of your 90 days. Some countries (Germany for instance) have special permits during which you can figure out what you want to do, provided you are self supporting in the interim. Once you have a permit like that for one EU country you can go to any other (though formally you have a deal with the Germans).
Tourist visas wouldn't be adequate in our case. For example, I had some friends move to Barcelona, rent an apartment, find jobs, open a bank account and travel every weekend to different regions in Spain. Then after 2 years they decided to move to Melbourne on a holiday work visa for 2 years. Then after that they moved to the south of France.
In each case they had a work permit (one is a French national, so France doesn't count) based on some work holiday scheme. But a few of these have age or education limits.
Our next adventure is to buy a boat and circumnavigate. First we have to buy a boat, then we have to equip it to cross oceans.
BTW, Berlin does appeal to me, and I recently discovered my wife speaks a little German. What is it with the french not wanting to speak any other language?
For work you'd indeed need a bit more than a tourist visum but if you just want to get a feel of a place to see if you'd like to grow some more roots then it may work if your income stream does not require invoicing others. I was on a work visum in Canada employed by a company that I held the shares in, applied for permanent resident status and never even got the papers before we decided to move again.
The French speak plenty of languages, especially the younger generation. You may have to prod them a bit and if you speak a little bit of French that may help to grease the wheels.
