Traveling between cities in a given country w train?

In Italy, the cheapest way is to buy train tickets from the Italian train company. A rail pass is rarely cost effective for Italy.

In other countries train travel can be more expensive, but there are travel cards (such as the Swiss Card or the Swiss Half Fare Card) which aren't rail passes, but can save you money. Germany offers a discount if you travel at certain times of day (not during rush hour on some routes). It really depends on your itinerary. If you pretty much know your itinerary, enter it on www.railsaver.com and click "only if a pass saves me money". This will give you an idea of whether you need a pass, but even railsaver does not take into account any discount tickets that may be available.

Railsaver.com - the dates only go up to 2008? Is this site still active???

The rail websites for the countries you mentioned.

http://www.trenitalia.com/cms/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=ad1ce14114bc9110VgnVCM10000080a3e90aRCRD

http://www.sbb.ch/en/index.htm

http://www.bahn.de/international/view/en/index.shtml

The various Swiss cards:
http://www.swisstravelsystem.ch/en/content/offer/tickets/

http://www.railsaver.com/railsaver.asp

Within Italy, it is often most economical simply to buy point-to-point 2nd class tickets at the train station, as you go along.

In Switzerland, the Swiss card or their half-price card could be a good value, depending how often you are going to travel. Especially if you are taking the train somewhere every single day, it would be worth it.

Generally speaking, in ANY situation though, you need to know exactly where you're going first. Then you can price point-to-point tickets vs. the various passes available.

Without a firm itinerary, it's really impossible for us to say which is better.

In italy we are doing venice -> florence -> siena -> rome (at least so far).

Then from there we wanted to go to switzerland for a few days and then go back to germany to depart.

Florence/Siena is best done by bus (6€). You can also bus Siena/Rome much cheaper than taking a train and the travel time is the same. The Florence/Siena bus departs hourly and takes about an hour.
http://www.sienamobilita.it/EN/index.html

The Siena/Rome has a special for 5€, but requires buying a Sena Card for a few euro to get that price. It doesn't cost much more without the Sena card.
http://www.sena.it/index_e.htm

You also have to keep in mind that a railpass does not include seat reservations on the faster trains in Italy and they are mandatory. You would have to purchase them in addition to the cost of the pass. That would cost 15-20€ per person per transport depending on type of train.

If you are comparing prices, the prices for Italy on Trenitalia include the seat reservation on the AV, ES or ICPlus trains.

The shortest duration of the various Swiss rail pass options is 4 days. So if you are only going to be in the country for a "few days" probably not be a good value in your situation.

>I know that there is the euro rail pass and we were going to use that to travel between countries. But how about within a country - like in germany or italy if we want to go from venice to rome or bologna or florence??

Well, you simply have to calculate what a pass day costs and compare it with the money you would spend on a given day for tickets, and then decide for how many days you buy an Eurail pass (I assume Flexi pass of some kind). It doesn´t matter whether your trip is "between countries" or "within a country".
That said, the Eurail pass is only very rarely a good value.

Passes are more economical the MORE you use them whether it is within one country or between several.

Saying that a pass is "rarely economical" may be a fairly good generalization but it is just that; a generalization. If you do a lot of travel a pass can easily become more economical AND convenient than buying point-to-point tickets.

Dukey - Please read. You are misquoting. I didn't say a pass is rarely economical. I said is was rarely cost effective for Italy which is true. For a pass to be economical in Italy, you pretty much have to travel from one end of the country to the other. It only comes out cheaper if you are traveling very long distances since in Italy you must buy seat reservations on the trains you are most like to want to use. If you take AV trains using a four day pass that would be an extra 100€ to the cost of the pass.

Passes have been so well marketed to Americans that they just assume it's a good deal when many times it isn't.

>Saying that a pass is "rarely economical" may be a fairly good generalization but it is just that; a generalization.

Of course it is a generalisation. It means that you have to check very carefully whether it is economical, and that for many (most) itineraries that were posted on this forum, it isn´t.

Let's put some numbers on it. There are in fact two generic cases where passes are beaten hands-down by normal tickets for typical itineraries.

1. Countries where train travel is so cheap relative to the cost of a pass. In particular, Italy & eastern Europe.

- Eurail France-Italy pass 5 days in 1 month costs $363 (source: railpass.com), you don't have to be a genius to work out that this equals 53 euro per day at current exchange rates. Add 15-20 euro surcharge every time you step onto a Eurostar AV fast train (and you WILL between main cities), that's 78 euro per day assuming one train ride per pass day.

- A tpical user only uses their pass on one day to go Rome-Florence. This costs a mere 39 euro full-whack even bought on the day, by fast train including reservation. Day trip Florence-Siena on the little hourly local train? 5 euro each way. Florence-Venice a few days later? This only costs 27 euro, fast trainreservation inluded. And you can buy all these on the day at the station OR in advance online at www.trenitalia.com with no postage fees and no booking fees (if you can persuade it to accept your US credit card, of course!). In fact, you can even get another 20% OFF these prices by selecting an advance-purchase 'Amica' fare.

2. In western Europe internationally and internally within France, Germany, Spain, you'll find cheap fares if you book in advance, like cheap air fares. Passes may save money over the 100 euro full-price on-the-day fare but as with airlines no-on here in Europe does that any more for long distance rail, we all go online in advace and book our 29 euro ticket Amsterdam-Berlin at http://bahn.de or 55 euro ticket including couchette Paris-Florence/Rome/Venice at http://www.voyages-sncf.com, or 49 euro ticket with couchette Amsterdam-Prague also at www.bahn.de. If you're prpeared to comit in advance to a specific date and time and train, these blow passes out of the water (eg that 49 euro Amsterdam-Prague compares with the 53 euro per day pass plus 20 euro couchette supplement).

I've put an explanation of which railway website to use for which journeys at http://www.seat61.com/Europe-train-tickets.htm