Best way to rent a car?

Probably, but it will cost a fortune. Drop fees across international frontiers are enormous. Easier and far far cheaper to train across borders and pick up a new car in a new country. Have you given thought to a possible itinerary? It might well be the case that you could do it all by train.

Yep, brace yourself for the drop off charge when returning in a different country. For an alternative to doing what you do here: renting a car, consider this. Just a thought: Renting a car in Europe is sometimes/often not the same economical and easy decision that it is to rent a car here. Some experienced Europe travelers say: in Europe, if trains go where you're going, take the train. Rental cars can be a headache in European cities, but make sense to explore rural areas that don't have good train service. Some savvy Europe travelers use a combination of train and rental car. It's not like here, where trains are rare (in western N. America, anyway) and rental cars are the obvious choice. To check out where trains go in Europe, use this handy website: http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en

Sure, you can do this. To get a good idea what it'll cost you, you can use autoeurope.com. Click where it says "for international one-way rentals." You can also do cost comparisons for renting in one country, dropping off, buying a train ticket, then renting again in another country, etc. Since you're going to 4 countries, it's hard for me to see that as the "easier" plan. There's no problem driving rental cars across borders in western European countries. Some rental companies have restrictions or added charges for driving into eastern European countries.

Kent, that website might be handy for someone who has done this before, but for this hick, it's not so much. I want to go from Venice to Vienna; it's telling me there are several stops, and I need to choose one. It doesn't tell me the options for stops...unless I am just not seeing it. This is why I am nervous about the trains; I don't seem to be able to figure out basic schedules!

Sorry to hear that, that site is the most user friendly Europe train schedule website on the internet. It's all there, but you may have to spend 10 minutes clicking around to figure it out. It's common here on the site to have first timers, not from areas of N. America where trains are common, who are just too intimidated by the European train system. The punishment is that it dooms you to renting cars for your entire Europe trip, a pity but many do it. You'll survive, but many decide they only want to make that mistake once. If you want to take another shot at figuring out Europe's trains, once the Private Message system on this site is up and running again (there's a temporary disruption), send me a Private Message (click the link under my name), and I'll be glad to spend some time trying to help you with the train schedule website.

Just because nobody mentioned it... you need a vignette sticker to drive on the highways in Austria.