Your itinerary is a bigger problem than which railpass. What does www.railsaver.com recommend?

I’d cut at least one city and re-plan this.

railsaver recommends the 8 days 5 country with some city-city tickets, but i’m thinking if we get the 21 day global pass it will give us flexibility on day trips and we can use the discounts for local travel on non-travel days.

what are some cheap airlines that fly from london to paris, the tube is kinda expensive…

Thanks

Much of your local travel will not be covered by the railpass, so I would not figure local transportation into the equation. The flexibility for day trips by train may be an issue, but many of these will be very inexpensive, plus I don’t see any time for day trips in your itinerary.

You can use www.whichbudget.com to see which budget airlines fly which routes. You should also look around the “cheap flights” forum here to see what others have found. Look at www.eurostar.com to see what specials are available on the days you want to take the chunnel train. There are often specials, like youth leisure fares, that are as cheap as flying — particularly when you add in the cost of getting to and from the fairly obscure airports that some of the low cost airlines use. Plus, with this overly packed itinerary you’ll want to save all the transportation time you can. Eurostar is faster than flying.

I’d be looking for more flights. You’ve pretty much planned the maximum for overnight train trips. It can be exhausting to arrive in a strange city — carrying all your gear — at morning rush hour after not getting much sleep on the train. Sometimes what you really want is a shower and a nap. You usually can’t check into a hostel (and in some cases can’t even leave your pack there) until mid-afternoon.

With the rail pass, do I just book tickets on the raileurope.com website? and if i buy separate city-city tickets are there cheaper website than what’s listed on raileurope?

Also how does it work if your rail pass doesn’t cover a portion of a overnight train? Say Prague-Amsterdam overnight, and my pass only overs Germany and neatherlands, how is the segment from prague-german border purchased/calculated?

First off, Rail Europe is not a sponsor of this site. Try “booking” and then “rail” at the top of the page or www.railpass.com to buy from our sponsors. These sites usually have lower shipping fees that Rail Europe, so you may save a couple of bucks, too.

No, your railpass is your ticket for any train. If you choose a train that requires a reservation, buy the reservation at the train station in Europe. Reservations usually end up costing twice as much (with shipping, handling fees and inflated prices) from any of the railpass websites.
The cheapest way to buy tickets is either at the train station in Europe or from the individual national rail company’s website (renfe.com for spain, bahn.de Germany, sncf.com for France, etc.) Railpass websites charge “global tariff” prices and will end up costing at least 1/3 more than buying in Europe. You can sometimes get really great special pricing at the national rail company websites.
Just buy a ticket for the Czech portion at the train station. Show your railpass to the ticket agent. You can buy tickets for almost any train in Europe at any major train station. Since you’re more likely to run into a ticket agent with great English skills in Western Europe, I’d buy the Czech portion of both tickets in Berlin.