1-2 Months in Europe- What City to Make our Base?

Sounds like your better option might be to spread things out a bit and go with your alternative plan of staying in 5 or 6 cities for a week at a time and explore the surrounding area from that base...depending on your interests.

I'd suggest Krakow, for example, as a base for a week to enjoy both the city and to permit easy day trips to Zakopane in the Tatras mountains and to Auschwitz just west of the city, etc. The cheap and efficient Polish rail service will permit explorations pretty far afield. Lots to keep you occupied for a week, and in the evening you'll get to return to one of the prettiest cities in Europe.

Same thoughts re Amsterdam - lots of possible day trips from the central train station, not to mention casual explorations by bike into the surrounding countryside.

About the only place I'd suggest a car, and a stay longer than a week, would be in Ireland. The place is just too pretty to short-change, and the mobility of a vehicle opens up access to areas that it would difficult or impossible to see using public transport alone.

Renting an apartment for a week (or series of apartments in this case) will save you a lot of money versus hotels, and we've found that the extra savings realized by shopping locally and cooking in is significant. Plus, it's just more fun to live like a local.

I would definitely consider more home bases in order to get more variety. There's a limit to how far you can get by train within one day or half-day. The more times you have to backtrack to your home base, the more I think of it as wasted time.

Usually, your best train connections will be within a single country, unless your base is pretty close to a border. Vienna is a central base with direct trains running across borders in all directions, but you still have to look at travel time, e.g. Bratislava (1 hour), Budapest (3 hours), Prague (4 hours), Munich (4 hours), Venice (8 hours). Vienna is not widely considered "low cost," but your actual cost will depend a lot on the apartment that you reserve.

Of course, some major cities are also good hubs for budget airlines, in which case you're looking for easier, close-in airports (Amsterdam, Zurich, Geneva, most German airports, also Vienna).

You could start in Budapest for your base for the first month or so. You're within a couple hours to a half day's drive or ride from Vienna, Bratislava, Zagreb, Bled, Prague, Belgrade, Krakow, and western Romania. Also, Wizzair has cheap flights around Eastern Europe from Budapest airport. Vienna also easily connects to Europe destinations.

Then, you could do the week-long Danube river cruise from Budapest to Nuremberg, Germany. Fly From Frankfurt or Nuremberg or Munich to Amsterdam for 2-3 days or a week. Then, head over to make Dublin your base for the last 2-3 weeks. Ryanair has cheap flights from Dublin to Scotland and the rest of Europe.

OR, you could start in Dublin and then head to Budapest (flight). Take the Danube River cruise to Germany (not sure the cruise goes the other direction...). then finish in Amsterdam.

If you've got 1-2 months, you've got the flexibility to make your trip anything you want it to be.

I'd suggest you start at Budapest and explore the region by train and river boat. Then take trains north to Bratislava, Vienna, Prague, Dresden and Berlin--fabulous cities not previously seen..
Then catch a budget airline to just another major region you've never seen--like Barcelona on Vueling Airlines. Madrid is easily reached by train. And then fly over to Portugal. The Algarve region of southern Portugal has easy flights up to London area from Faro Airport, and you can connect to Scotland or Ireland from there for a low cost.
If you were there in early Summer, you could fly over to Copenhagen and catch a Baltic cruise to Estonia, St. Petersburg, Helsinki and Stockholm for half the price of a Viking Cruise on the Danube. (We're going there in 2 weeks.)
With the time allotted and since you can go in the off season, you've just got so many options to choose from.

Hi,

"...centrally located in western and eastern Europe...."

I would choose Berlin and Vienna...good day and night train connections, (Vienna, Budapest, Warsaw from Berlin Ostbahnhof), regional train ( Schwerin, Frankfurt an der Oder, Neustrelitz, Greifswald ) and ICE (Hamburg, Hannover, Leipzig, Halle ) connections, trains to Rostock for the ferry, discount airline hubs. Berlin fits your "low cost" criteria, especially in reference to accommodations. I've stayed in Berlin one time for just under two weeks consecutively at a Pension since I don't do the apartment option. Both Berlin and Vienna have the S-Bahn net to reach the suburbs and outlying towns,

"...a week's river cruise...." Which one? Is that in Germany? The Rhine, Elbe, the Oder?

With the scope you mention so broad, even across 2 months, I would suggest a continuous journey ...

River Cruise 7 nts (or Ireland/Scotland)
Amsterdam 7 nts
Hamburg 3 nts
Berlin 7 nts
Dresden 3 nts
Prague 7 nts
Vienna 5 nts
Budapest 7 nts
Zagreb 3 nts
Dalmatian Coast 7 nts (or Madrid)

From a purely practical point of view . . .

If you were doing a home exchange it could make sense to stay in one location and take overnight trips to other places. But if you are paying for an apartment, and then paying for overnight stays, costs will add up quickly. You want good train connections, which tells me that you don't want to rent or lease a car. Traveling by train for day trips - or even one-nighters - means shorter hours for sightseeing, limiting yourselves to places that are easily accessible by train and paying for round-trip train tickets. You "have interest in" Ireland and Croatia, neither of which has a good train system.

I would always choose Amsterdam for the same reasons many others have mentioned. It is very well connected by train to many places and even the city public transport is excellent and it is an easy place to explore by foot or bike. It is easy to make a short trip to Paris, it is not hard to make a short trip to Belgium, and there are many beautiful cities in the Netherlands. Haarlem is a lovely place to go and very nearby Amsterdam. Den Bosch is not as close as Haarlem but very beautiful too. Maastricht is even a little farther, about a 2 hour train trip but is a beautiful town to see if you have the time.

Late spring is more expensive than early fall by a little bit but both are beautiful times to come. Early fall to save a bit more on a place to stay. At every time of year Amsterdam is my favorite city on earth. It is also in the middle between being expensive like Scotland and cheaper like east and southern europe.