Ok, another dumb question for all of you Fodorites. Please help me out over here!
Recently, my family and I have devised a plan for me to return to Austria with a friend on a one way flight. Then I would stay there for a week or two, take a train to Frankfurt and stay with friends for almost two months. I want my flight to be on Air Canada, and we searched for a one way flight and the prices were outrageous! It was over $2000! Is that normal? Why would it be more expensive to do that? We want to share the same flight going back there, and then I will book a flight from Frankfurt back home, so I don't understand why it would be more expensive. Are they giving me round trip prices even though I clicked on one way?? Please help us!

Usually one- way fares are considerably higher than roundtrip ones. This is usually due to the fact that you can get discounted tariffs on roundtrip flights whereas one- way trips usually are full fare.
You might want to consult with a good travel agent who should be able to give you some sort of open- jaw option on Air Canada.

Arrange for a round-trip flight from Canada to Frankfurt; you will need to research options for getting from Frankfurt to Austria (Lufthansa round-trip Frankfurt-Vienna, for example)or maybe the train. It will take a little sleuthing but it will be cheaper. Start with expedia.ca.

Arrange for a round-trip flight on AC from Canada to Frankfurt.

You will need to research options for getting from Frankfurt to Austria (Lufthansa or maybe Austrian air round-trip Frankfurt-Vienna, for example)or maybe the train. It will take a little sleuthing but it will be cheaper. Start with expedia.ca.

One way tickets are almost always more expensive than RT... obviously, fares don't make sense! It sounds like you care about which flight you take over there, so I would book an open jaw into Austria and out of Frankfurt. It seems that Austria is fairly expensive to fly into (at least thta's what I've found), so you might want to pass on the idea of traveling with friends, and fly RT to Frankfurt, then just take a train to meet them in Austria.

ask air canada, via telephone, for an open jaw ticket into munich and out of frankfurt for the dates you want...it should be only slightly more (less than $100) than a regular roundtrip to munich...
or better go see a travel agent...or you could try travelocity or one of those on the net..

one way is the wrong way to be thinking