Point to Point Confusion

You are generally correct. But to clarify #2; Each country/company has a limit to how early you can buy tickets. Sometimes it's 60 days. More commonly, it's 90 days. In a few cases, it's 120 days (it can also be +- a day or two from those numbers). So you simply CAN'T get them any earlier than that. But to get one of the numerous discounts on popular routes, you have to buy as soon as they become available. Then they get progressively more expensive as the train fills up. Now, if the potential savings in getting P2P tickets was just a bit - like 10-20%, then it might be worthwhile to just get the rail pass for the sake of simplicity. But that's not really the case. If you get smart with the various trains, and get the best possible prices, you could save 50-70% that way, depending on the routes you want. It is a lot of work to figure out, but any train involving Germany is easy with the DB BAHN web site; http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en Also a strike against passes is the fact that almost every popular run now has some sort of seat-reservation supplement you are required to pay. Sometimes it's not much, but sometimes it is. So the pass very often doesn't really get you on the train for free. Meanwhile, anyone getting one of those 50-70% off deals doesn't pay anything extra as a supplement....

Nope. No one site to get them all. If you want the best prices, you have to work for them. RailEurope is the easy way out and it will be more expensive. Secondly, where are you going in these countries? You don't identify. In all countries, you may be on the basic regionale trains that you don't have to buy in advance. The fare is the same for regionale trains most everywhere whether you buy online or show up at the train station. Your Eurail pass will get you on the trains without difficulty. However, if you are on the better trains in France and Italy, you can't just get on with a Eurail pass. You will have to pay a supplemental fee first either online or at the train station. Surprise! And, in France, they limit seats on their nicer trains to Eurail pass holders. Next, many of the discounted train tickets that you can get online for Italy and France may be either non-refundable, non-exchangeable or both. That's the trade-off for the better prices. Lastly, when you buy discounted tickets in advance online for the nicer trains, you will be locking yourself into specific travel dates and times. Bottom line is that your Eurail pass will work fine if you want to pay higher fares. You will have maximum flexibility on the trains you ride. You will pay supplemental fares in France, Italy and sometimes in Germany for the nice higher-speed trains. You can't just hop on these trains. For Amsterdam, if you ride the Thalys train into Paris, they have the highest supplemental fares for Eurail pass holders of any train system I have seen in Europe. You could pay and extra 39Euro to get your seat reservations. Also, Thalys limits seats to Eurail pass holders.

There has been some discussion, here and on other boards, indicating the French rail system may withdraw from some of the passes. Yet another reason to work out point-to-point prices first rather than assuming passes save money.

Per Southam's comments, the French are dropping out of the 3,4 & 5 Select country Eurail passes beginning 1/1/13. They will continue to be involved in the Global pass.

Thanks so much for the info. Another question if I may. I understand there are two main routes from Munich to Venice. When buying a ticket, is the fastest route automatically chosen by the computer?

The DB BAHN web site lists a dozen departures Munich-Venice, all are around seven hours. To purchase, you choose one and follow the prompts. I looked around 90 days ahead and the saver fare for the direct night train is 39 euros. All other routes have one train change and the price is not available (or at least not until you fill out more information...)

there are two main routes from Munich to Venice I would say there is only one main rail route. That is through Innsbruck and over Brenner Pass, through Verona. The night train goes through Salzburg, but that is to connect to another night train, and they go together to Venice via Villach. You could also go via Switzerland and Milan, but that would require more connections and take more time. The Bahn website should automatically show you the fastest route, amongst others. Sometimes, for instance overnight Munich to Paris, it will show both a no-change connection by night train all the way to Paris and a faster connection switching to an express train somewhere in France. You can force the Bahn to show you slower, more roundabout, connections by using the "Stopover" function. In the case of Munich to Venice, in addition to the night train, it will show five ECs from Munich to Verona. One of these trains continues on to Venice. If you take any of the others, you will have to take an Italian train from Verona to Venice. The Bahn does not usually sell online tickets, either full fare or discounted, for rail legs entirely outside of Germany, even when the entire trip starts in Germany, in this case Verona to Venice, so it won't show you fares using the Italian train from Verona.

There is no one site to get all you might need but the gold standard site for learning about European train tickets is www.seat61.com.