Originally Posted by CPMaverick
But I don't think ITA can tell me the best rates to *anywhere* in Eastern Europe. So I'm just looking for a starting point for my search. Maybe a half dozen places to start searching for.
I use Travelocity without dates (flexible dates) for city pairs. It takes some work, but is pretty accurate, and gives you the days the fares are available. Often, buying separate tickets is a lot cheaper. One set for over the Atlantic, then a separate set for intra-european. Look up some foreign sites for good prices, such as Opodo, easylow, kelkoo, europebyair, etc. This site gives you a great idea on what to look for as to airlines.
http://www.whichbudget.com/
It helps if you at least pick a few cities, and check the fares. i.e. KRK-PRG, PRG-BUD, etc. Also do the reverse, and the fares might be different, i.e KRK-PRG could be a completely different price than PRG-KRK. Try different combinations and you get some wild results, believe me. Also, sometimes you can take a train between city pairs, and use open jaw tickets in Europe. They are a lot more flexible in many cases than we are here. For example, you can fly to Prague, take a train to Vienna or Badapest, then return by air from Budapest. Open jaws work fine with awards, and often with purchased tickets.
In the example I used above, we flew LO from KRK-WAW. Stayed for 2 nights and then flew to PRG. They considered it a one way flight on the same ticket.
Several times we flew to LHR and returned from CDG (or reversed) for the same price as a R/T (or a few dollars more). We do the same for Italy now, and arrive and depart from different cites, instead of doubling back and wasting time to get a R/T ticket.
Experiment and have some fun. Sometimes I have more fun figuring out the crazy routings than with the trip itself............but I'm wierd anyway!
Good luck, and keep asking questions. Everything that I told you was what I learned here from others.