Quiet Lion, The way to fly around Europe dirt cheap is to pair up your trans-Atlantic ticket with a visit Europe pass. For example, if you buy a ticket to Europe with Northwest, they will pair it up with a book of flight coupons to be used on KLM, etc. Each leg of a flight is one coupon. They are about $100 each and you can use up to 12 in one trip!

If Northwest does this, then maybe the Star Alliance carriers do it also. The key is ticketing the Europe pass at the SAME time as your trans-Atlantic ticket, in which case you may be too late. I tried to get one with Continental but they told me that they did not do the visit Europe passes.