<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by cattle:
I am heading to Germany and Austria in the summer with my wife and have been stressing (a little) as to what to do about purchasing in advance, what class to buy, flex pass or not, etc...</font>
A German rail pass, if you buy one, will also cover travel from Munich to Salzburg, Austria, at no extra cost, so keep that in mind. They are sold as flexible day passes, so you need to pick how many days you want in a fixed period (i.e. any 7 days in 30). I've actually bought a number of rail passes from Rick Steves in the past, and have always got them promptly. Here is the link to railpasses on his site:
http://www.ricksteves.com/rail/choosemenu.htm
German rail has an English site that will give you pricing in Euros for individual trips, so you can decide if a railpass is worthwhile:
http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/e
To get today's US$/Euro conversion rate:
http://www.oanda.com