Rail Question

An important missing piece of information is how many people you mean by 'we'. This can have a big effect on the economics of the itinerary that you have posted. For example, your German trips are in Bavaria. That means that you can purchase a daily Bayern Ticket for €27 which will allow up to 5 people to travel after 9.00AM anywhere in Bavaria on that day. You can buy this ticket from the ticket machines at every German railway station. That means that your day trips from Munich to Augsburg, Ulm, Mittenwald and Garmisch will cost your group a total of €27 PER DAY. Ditto for the day trips from Nuremberg. The day trip from Salzburg to Berchtesgaden costs about €8 and therefore is not expensive enough to warrant the use of a day from a Eurail Pass: you'd be better off buying point-to-point tickets.
Of your longer trips in second class:
Munich-Nurnberg €45
Nurnberg-Innsbruck €53
Innsbruck-Salzburg €35
Salzburg-Vienna €45
These are 'normal' fare prices, and cheaper may sometimes be available.However, even at these prices, point-to-point tickets might well be cheaper than one day's cost on a Eurail Pass.
I don't know the prices of Vienna-Venice and Venice -Rome, but they MIGHT be the only trips where a Eurail Pass could be economical, but I doubt it.
Reservations are NOT compulsory on the German trips you have specified, and I have never bothered with them, always finding a seat.
Vienna -Venice might be a night train, and you would have to pay extra for a sleeping berth.

for the INTERnational expresses and certainly the NIGHT trains resverations are possible/advisable (if youre the tipical famiy too scary if they cannot sit together), in EUROPE ths cost 3 (or 3,5 or 4) EUR per SEAT and PER trip. as YOUR agent has no access to that mainframe (and in fact its ONLY poss to do so 2 or maybe 3 month advance), he slaps on his own expense.
as #1 says; ONLY for Wien-Venezia and IN italia (as trains are often quite crowded there, and reserv is obligatory anyway for the Intercity), you NEED to make reserv- do that on ARRIVAL= a few days before the next trip out. simply ask around and spend 5 mins more- the century-old wisdom.
#1 is also qute right to point out: check th price diff, as the 3 or 4 day pas may be much cheaper. pay locally for short-distance tckets

Thanks bmta and adeben, your advice is very helpful. There are two of us travelling. Adeben, do I understand you correctly? A daily Bayern Ticket would cost 27 euros for the two of us? The prices I got from Die Bahn were way higher. I believe you of course but wonder how foreigners such as myself would ever find out about such things.

Thanks again

Laender-Tickets including info on Bavaria-Ticket.

I'm a foreigner from Melbourne, Australia, and I found all this information over several years by looking at the D-Bahn website, and then travelling around Germany. The link given by altona above takes you to the D-Bahn site, or you can simply type 'D-Bahn' into Google, and away you go!

Note that you can't use a Laender-Ticket ticket on ICE or IC trains, but the regional trains are frequent and quite speedy.

More top tips:

You can book cheap fares on the Vienna-Venice sleeper train at www.oebb.at</a> (Austrian railways), just leave it in the German version and look for Italy EuroNight tickets. It's well worth the effort to do this - fares from 49 euros per person in 4-berth couchette, when a railpass could cost 70 euros per person per day plus a 20 euro supplement for the cocuhette. You print out your own ticket, easy!

Also, use www.trenitalia.com/en/index.html for book Venice-Rome. The fare is only about 40 euros including reservation, again better value than a 70-euro-per-day pass plus 9 euro Eurostar Italia supplement for the reservation.

From Munich you can go to Garmisch, Mittenwald and on to Innsbruck on the same trainline.

Railroad map showing all stations covered by the Bayern Ticket. Covered are e.g. also Salzburg and Ulm
Restrictions are
- only regional trains (S-Bahn, RB, RE, IRE, ALX, BOB, ...)
Easiest way to find connections you can use with the Bayern Ticket is to select as means of transport "only local transport" at the
DB timetable.
There are routes which are served only by regional trains (e.g. to Mittenwald), thus there plays this restriction no role at all. For Munich to Nuremberg the RE trains will need 2 hours (with just up to 200 kph and a few stops) instead of 1 hour by ICE (with up to 300 kph). The savings are however huge.
- on weekdays only past 9am
The Bayern Ticket is valid
Mo-Fr from 9am till 3am next day
Sa,Su from midnight till 3am next day
For further day trips on a weekday this may be indeed a restriction. If there is a good connection starting just somewhat before 9am you could buy a normal ticket to the first stop where the train departs past 9am and use the Bayern Ticket from there on.

Extra bonuses are
- covers nearly all local public transport
In all big cities: there U-Bahn (metro), trams and buses are covered. Also most regional bus companies.
This is only true for cities in Bavaria: i.e. not for the buses in Salzburg and Ulm.
- gives (small) discounts to various sights
You can grab a leaflet with them. E.g. you'll get a discount for the Zugspitzbahn from Garmisch to the Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany.

Buy the Bayern Ticket from ticket machines on spot. If you go to a counter it is EUR 2,00 more expensive there.

Than there are a couple of trips inside a "Verkehrsverbund", the local public transport network of a city/region.
Nuremberg - Rothenburg: VGN
Here use a TagesTicket Plus for the whole VGN network. EUR 13,80 for both of you. If bought on a Saturday it's also good for Sunday.
Salzburg - Berchtesgaden: SVV
The buses use the shorter route through less SVV zones and thus also cheaper (day ticket is EUR 9,20 per person). If you use the train the route goes through more SVV zones (day ticket is EUR 14,20 pp).
Mittenwald - Innsbruck: VVT
and in case
Munich - Dachau: MVV (has the most complete part in English)

Tickets of such a network cover generally all means of local public transport. The tickets are always zone-to-zone tickets. Which means that you can travel from any train/tram/bus stop in a zone (= city/town) to any such stop in the other zone. You can buy these tickets from ticket machines.

Seat reservations with any of these local public transport tickets is obsolete, as seat reservation is only possible on far distance trains (IC/EC or ICE) not covered by these tickets.

I would do Garmisch/Mittenwald not as a day trip, but as transfer trip from Munich to Innsbruck. Maybe with a stopover in one of these two towns. There are direct (regional) trains Munich - Garmisch - Mittenwald - Innsbruck. This will be also the most scenic route with your itinerary. More scenic than the main line Munich - Kufstein - Innsbruck.

In Austria there is no fare difference between regional and far distance trains like in Germany (and Italy).
With the "1-Plus-Freizeitticket" the 2nd person on this ticket receives a discount. These are normal tickets you can buy on spot.
Innsbruck - Salzburg: EUR 61,20 (for both of you)
Salzburg - Vienna: EUR 78,00 (for both of you)

SparSchiene Italy Vienna - Venice from EUR 29,00
As the online booking form is in German only, you may find it easier to call the booking centre (+43 5 1717).
As this is an offer limited in numbers, you should order it well in advance. Otherwise you're on risk that the cheap specials are gone.