Also, once in these countries, what transportation do you use to travel WITHIN the country/city? Thank you!Traveling INSIDE Europe?
Good questions to start asking, but unfortunately the exact answers are pretty tough to give without more specifics.
When travelling within a country, public transit is normally excellent in Europe. The only exception is that there are some regions of Europe that are arguably better to travel with a car (rental or otherwise). Such regions may be the Black Forest of Germany, or throughout the country roads of France. Aside from these exceptions, it is very common to use trains within a country.
As to whether or not a 5-country pass is a good idea, it really does come down to what your itinerary is. If you only plan on taking the train a total of five times or so, it likely is not the most cost-effective method of taking the train. Point-to-point tickets can be inexpensive, especially in Italy.
It is a good idea to price out the cost of point-to-point trips by going to the website of the country from which the train is departing (ie. from Italy to France, you would look at the Italian rail website for a ticket price) and then compare it to the overall cost of a rail pass.
Railpass: http://www.raileurope.com
Regional train sites:
Germany: http://www.bahn.de
France: http://www.tgv-europe.com
Switzerland: http://www.sbb.ch/en/home.htm
Italy: http://www.trenitalia.com
Austria: http://www.oebb.at/en/
Once you have a more specific idea of a timetable, it would be easier to tell you the best and most cost-effective method of travel.Traveling INSIDE Europe?
Eurail passes are good for the trains in the participating systems, but not for public transportation within the cities you might visit. The travel days do not have to be consecutive. You need to know that most international trains, high speed trains and night trains will require reservations and you have to pay an additional fee when using a railpass. Here in Italy, for example, it will cost an additional 10 euro for a high speed train. It is almost always cheaper just to buy individual tickets rather than using a railpass here in Italy. In many cities here, it's very easy to get around on foot. Some places have good metro systems or buses when you need to go longer distances. In Venice, there is the vaporetto (water bus) to get around if you don't just walk.
There is a huge amount of information on train travel and railpasses here: http://www.seat61.com/ . this has much more than there is room for in a single answer here. The site also includes links to the various national train websites where you can find schedules and prices.
Based on your other question, you're planning on a 10 day trip. I would highly recommend that you use the German train site to check the travel times and connections to the places you would like to visit: http://www.bahn.de/i/view/USA/en/index.s鈥?/a> . with your proposed itinerary, you're likely to spend most of your time in train stations and on trains rather than actually seeing much of anything here in Europe. You would be better off cutting back on the number of places and distances.
When you have more details of exactly where you want to go, you can ask again and get more specific answers about how to get around in a specific city.
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