theapprentice said:
Its not a bad idea, since the flight is about $400 and the pass is like $400 along with $2000 spending money = $2800 for a two month trip to Europe and 17 diffrent countries. The youth hostel are about 10 euro's a night.
After having made almost a dozen trips to Europe and the Middle East in the past 5 years, I feel a little qualified to answer this question.
Firstly, finding a $400 ticket is going to be very chancey. The only way I could forsee this happening is if you flew out of New York on a highly discounted flight to a relatively close city. My average ticket cost to Europe is anywhere from $650-900. $650 is the lowest I've gotten from New Orleans to Amsterdam, and $900 was from Baton Rouge to Paris (then again, I paid an extra $100 to ensure my frequent flier miles would count, but that's a different story)...
As for a 2-month eurail youth pass, the best website to use is:
http://www.raileurope.com/us/rail/passes/eurail_youth_flexipass.htm
The flexipass is exactly what you need. It ranges from 465 to 612, and will give you 10 days or 15 days in 2 months, respectively. However, your ambitious goal of 17 countries in 2 months isn't really feasible. In order to do that, you'd have to be in each country for a little under 4 days. That's fine, but also remember you're travelling by train, which means you'll have to factor in travel times - even if you leave at 10pm every night, there will be many times where the total travel time will exceed 12 hours. At 17 countries, that eats your time right up.
Hostels, unfortunately, aren't 10 euros - unless you're going to stay in the worst dive you can find, in the worst possible neighborhood. If you want a hostel that has relatively clean floors and/or sheets, and is within a reasonable distance from major attractions, be prepared to spend 20-30 euros a night. Bear in mind the current exchange rate. One benefit to rail travel is that you can bring an eyemask and earplugs and sleep on the train on your travel nights (if you don't want to pay extra for a sleeper compartment).
$2000 USD is far too low to bring as spending money. That translates out to roughly 1500 euros (courtesy of
http://www.xe.com/ucc ... which you should bookmark). For a 2 month trip, I'd bring at least 50 euros a day. This is conservative, as there will be many things you need that money for - your train ticket only gets you from country to country, but once you're in the country you'll need things such as inter-city bus/metro passes, taxi fares, admission fees, "emergency fees", food, etc etc etc. The costs add up.
Anyway, browse through some of my old posts regarding travel within Europe for additional information. Hope this helps.
