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There have been times I wished I had a VPN connection to the web.

Check out VPNBook. It's free and easy to set up.

I was using it the other day, and Google came up in Romanian, because they thought I was in Romania. I usually use their Canadian server. For some reason, Google thinks it's in India, but it's actually in Montreal, so the performance impact from here is minor.

However, do check for "DNS leakage". DNS leakage is when your DNS requests fail to go over the VPN, thus potentially allowing your ISP to see where you're surfing. There are several sites that will check if you are leaking. E.g., here is how dnsleaktest.com describes their service:

The DNS leak test works by sending your client a series of domain names to resolve within a specific test domain. Each request is sent from your client to your configured DNS server. Even if you have configured a single DNS server, there may be many other servers that the request is passed on to in order to be resolved (normally to load balance the requests). For example if you configure Google DNS then you will often find 6-10 Google DNS servers which are fullfilling the DNS requests.
The Standard test performs 1 round of 6 queries for a total of 6 queries. This should be more than sufficient to discover if you have a DNS leak. The original test prior to the 2014 upgrade did 3 queries. The advantage of this test is that it is fast. Use this test to quickly check for dns leaks when you connect to your VPN service.
The Extended test performs 6 rounds of 6 queries for a total of 36 queries. This high number ensures that all DNS servers are discovered. However for the purposes of discovering if you have a DNS leak this is not normally neccessary and can take 10-30 seconds longer to complete. If you have strong anonymity/privacy requirements you can choose the extended test just to be certain.

My configuration was leaking because it was configured to use my router for DNS, thus using Verizon's DNS. So, I added a few lines of code to switch it over to Google (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) when bringing up the VPN and then back to the router when taking the VPN down. The Google addresses are routed through the VPN, whereas the router's, being on the LAN, could not be. It would also work to use Google permanently, regardless of whether the VPN is up.