The best deal is to buy from national rail site (for a given country, e.g. Renfe for Spain, SNCF - for France, etc) in advance (usually 30 to 60 days before departure)

Individual tickets might work best. RailEurope is pricey for most legs. Look elsewhere - beginning with the national railways website for each country.

Paris-Amsterdam: As low as 35€ for one on the Thalys trains with advance booking:
http://www.thalys.com/nl/en/offers-and-fares

Amsterdam-Berlin: 39€ for one, advance-sale deal at http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en , available 92 days out.

Berlin to Moscow: how about flying? www.whichbudget.com

For Madrid to Paris and Milan to Barcelona yuo might be better off flying.

Also - why do RT tickets to Mardid rather than open jaws into Madrid and out of wherever. No reason to waste time makking a giant circle. And if you're determined to do train - why not Marid to Barcelona to paris?

Why on earth are you going back to Spain from Milan at the end of the trip when you've already been there?

If you haven't already booked your flights, you need to book open jaw tickets (into one city and out of another). No point in all your backtracking.

Also look at the many budget airlines which can be much faster than trains and many times cheaper.
www.whichbudget.com
www.skyscanner.net

For such long train rides in several countries I would strongly investigate the Eurail Select Pass for 5 countries - Spain, France, Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg as one country for pass purposes), Germany and Italy - the pass is valid over a 2-month period and you buy a certain number of days of unlimited travel to be used anytime over that two-month period. Use the pass to connect between your bases. You would need a 5-day pass (pass not valid in Russia)

Anyway check out these fantastic sites IMO to learn about European rail travel - www.budgeteuropetravel.com; www.seat61.com; www.ricksteves.com. For schedules I always use the www.bahn.de or German Railways site that has train schedules for all of Europe.

Hi G,

Looking at your route on a map indicates that it might be much more efficient to fly into St Petersbourg, train to Moscow, then head for Berlin and the rest of Western Europe, ending up in Madrid.

Is the trip to Russia all that important? It adds a lot of distance.

Madrid to Paris there's an excellent trainhotel, with cosy sleepers, cafe-bar with real bar and bar stools and elegant restaurant car. Departs Madrid Chamrtin 1900 arrives Paris Gare d'Austerlitz 09:03.

It's a good example of why passes aren't the cheaper option, they are the gold-plated option. WITH a pass, you must pay a 79 euro supplement for the trainhotel for a bed in a 4-bed Tourist sleeper. WITHOUT a pass, it's easy to pick up a special fare for 79 euros at www.renfe.com.

Paris to Amsterdam starts at 35 euros WITHOUT a pass, inlcuidng reservation, booked online in advance at www.thalys.com. WITH a pass, you must pay a 39 euro supplement.

Ameterdam to Berlin by two-hourly INterCity train starts at just 29 euros booked in advace at www.bahn.de. So why buy a pass costing 50-60 euros per day?

Milan to Barcelona there's another excellt trainhotel 3 times each week, saving a hotel bill and avoiding a stressful and polluting short haul flight. Fares from 79 euros, book at www.renfe.com or www.trenitalia.com

Barcelona to Madrid fares start at 48 euros with a 'web' fare booked at www.renfe.com

One has to wonder why Man in Seat 61 hawks railpasses on his commercial site - why he has a link to RailEurope to buy passes. He should it seems just say passes are a bad deal and not sell them thru his site.

Hypocrisy?

Different products for different people at different times, seems ok to me.

One website that tries to cover more and more of europe as a whole is www.bahn.de

www.bahn.de is the German Railways web site and one that I find easiest to use to get train schedules and info on each train all over Europe. Only have fares for trains involving Germany however.

We don't have too much information on why this particular itinerary nor why trains, but here goes:

If it were me, I'd fly on a budget airline for some of the longer segments, especially that Milan to Barcelona segment. The drawback with a budget airline is that you are allowed only one carryon of a limited size. Look at skyscanner.net for good budget airline fares.

Also possibly Madrid to Paris and Amsterdam to Berlin segment s could be by air.

Otherwise, if you know which dates you are travelling, then buy the train tickets in advance. The disadvantage of this is that you're locked into that particular train trip, so you have to be very certain that's the journey you want.

I wouldn't call my site 'commercial' - most big companies would call it very uncommercail in places! ;o)

Railpasses can be good value IF you realise they are the gold-plated option and you demand complete flexibility. Especially in Germany, Austria, Scandinavia away from the 'reservation compulsory, surcharge' countries such as Italy, France and Spain.

They key message is that cheap 'budget train fares' booked in advance direct with the operators are now usually the cheapest option, NOT a pass. Of course, that means no refunds, no chnages to travel plans.

Well, it is commercial, though, you can't pretend it isn't by saying so. It has a .com URl ending and also you obviously earn money from it has it had ads on it (as well as the links which you probably get money from). It may be a fine site, I don't use it, but don't try to pretend it isn't commerical nor a business when it obviously is.

saying that www.seat61.com is not a commercial site is the ultimate hypocrisy and that the owner would state that here is unbelievable.

a quick look shows ads and or commercial links to:
Rail Europe in U.S. Australia and Canada

Auto Parts Company

"Sell Your Annuity"

Hotel Booking

"Get Your Credit Score"

Cable TV and phone packages

and many more

www.seat61.com is a blatantly commercial site and for the owner to come here and flog it and then say it is not is pure hypocrisy IMO.

I have recommended www.seat61.com hundreds and hundreds of times because of its vast rail content as anyone reading my posts will know - over and over - and will continue to since it is not my site but to say it is not commercial well...

Really, having a .com URL has absolutely nothing to do with whether a site is commercial or not! Both my (old) website and (current) blog have .com URLs, and I've never made a cent from either. All the other blogs I've ever seen are .com. What other URL do you think they should use? Jeesh.

And I'm not sure why we're suddenly having an attack on seat61.com, which is one of the most useful sites around. I've used the information there a number of times, and never bought anything based on the ads. Again, lots of sites out there that are run by traveling freelancers have ad links, but they're not "commercial" in the sense that walmart.com is.

Again let me say I mention www.seat61.com over and over again in my posts because it is a great great resource for European train travel - incredible resource. My only dispute was with the owner of the site saying here that it is not commercial when it by any definition is - if he would not have said his site was not commercial there would have been no discussion.

Amsterdam-Berlin is not exactly a scenic ride.
The scenery gets a bit boring after some hours.
The IC trains are not exactly fast, and not that comfortable compared with the real high speed lines. BYO food as they only have snack bar car and no real dining car.
transavia.com could be an option.