8 days European Trip

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Hello, I need help planning my travel route. I will be starting in Mannheim, Germany and plan to go to Amsterdam, Paris, Zurich or Bern and maybe Brussels. Can anyone advise me on the cheapest route to take, be it by bus/rail/plane. Thank you =)

First of all, it is a bit difficult give advise about "cheapest route" without any particular dates or at least app.timing, since obviously option would differ in case you want to stat next week or in 3 month etc.
But if to say in general, in case you don't have any particular preference in sequence of visits to each destination, then you might try like Mannheim-Paris by train (here you can get a really decent fare since because of direct ICE, so it's not a problem to catch 39 EUR ticket), while from there same trick with catching discounted rail ticket for Thalys to Brussels/Amsterdam (can be as low as 25 EUR if you purchase in advance), while from Amsterdam it probably makes sense to fly to Switzerland, for instance using low-cost EasyJet to Basel. Flight tickets are relatively inexpensive in case of purchase in advance. Absolutely the best option for Swiss domestic train travel is SuperSaver ticket (http://www.sbb.ch/en/travelcards-and-tickets/tickets-for-switzerland/supersaver-tickets/offer.html), so doubt you can get any cheaper fare for Basel-Bern and Bern-Zurich. While in case of Zurich-Mannheim you can either purchase discounted tickets (both DB and SBB sell them) or do a bit different trick - SuperSaver ticket till the Swiss-German border, while from there you can use Baden-Württemberg-Ticket, which will allow you to travel the whole day within the Baden-Württemberg.
But at the same ticket you can do mirror reverse the route or exclude flying at all and make a type of circle. In terms of bus connections the most general source to search is Eurolines website, local companies under the name can have sometimes rather interesting offers, that can beat even discounted rail tickets in price, but again, hard to say anything without dates

First of all, thank you for your advice and for taking the time to respond to my inquiry. I plan to travel in about 4 weeks. Its kinda last minute and everything is quite expensive. I'v checked the Eurolines website, they don't seem to have the dates I want to travel on. I have a VRN Semester Ticket too, any way I can utilise it to cut costs ?

Oh I should add, I will be traveling with a friend.

I plan to travel in about 4 weeks.

Well, the problem here is that it's holiday time, so everybody tends to travel and most of the inexpensive discounted tickets tend to be sold out far long ago 
But anyway let's try something. It would be good exact date you want to start your trip, but even without it: for both 23/24 Dec. there are still ticket Mannheim-Paris for direct ICE for 59 EUR (which isn't that bad taking into account your dates), for Dec. 25 there are still 45 EUR tickets for Thalys to Amsterdam. Dec. 27 Easyjet Amsterdam-Basel will cost you 40 EUR. With Basel-Bern SuperSaver tickets everything is ok, since such tickets anyway are sold only 2 weeks in advance, so you just need to wait a bit and purchase those on time (it seems for this connection they start from 15 CHF now), same thing with Bern-Zurich. In case of Zurich-Mannheim for around Dec.30 there are as well still 39 EUR discounted tickets available for direct trains. Or, since you mentioned about a friend that will also travel, then Baden-Württemberg-Ticket is a good options, then both of you can travel all the way from the border to Mannheim for 29 EUR (+even do some stopovers on the way)

I have a VRN Semester Ticket too, any way I can utilise it to cut costs ?

Though we aren't really familiar with such local options as VRN, but anyway it's difficult to see how it can help. In terms of your trip from Mannheim, then maybe you can travel as close as possible towards French border, while from there you can get some domestic French ticket to Paris

I am planning 8 day trip to Europe in July.
We will land in paris and start my trip by spending 3-4 days in Italy and then 3 days in Switzerland. And back to Paris. I dont want to see much in Paris and just see 2-3 things which i could in last day and then flew back.

I know that covering 3 days in Italy or switzerland is very hectic and also missing lots of places. But I cannot spend more then 8 days and also we have to travel both place as I love Switzerland and my wife loves Italy.

I would like some help in deciding the itenerary \places which I should see. In Italy i was thinking of spening 1\2days in Venice. Go to Pisa (to see to leaning tower) and then 1\2 day in Rome (depend upon days spend in Venice.).
Thinking of going to Switzerland by train overnight (To save travel time).

Please recommed the places which I should cover on both country. This will be my first trip so it will be good if you also let us know whether we should buy any train pass or not, or just pay the train we board. In switzerland we for sure like to see mountains by train\cable Train.

Ok, let's go step-by-step here:
Paris-Italy: since you plan to visit Rome (which is rather far and not great (in terms of cheap tickets) rail connection from Paris), then we would probably advise you to fly Paris-Rome first and then make you way north. There are plenty of low-cost option for the route (EasyJet, RyanAir etc.), it almost definitely will be cheaper than rail (and much faster, which seems good for you since you'll have more time for Italy). If you don't want to fly, then the best option is just hunt for cheap discounted tickets in advance (either daytime TGV to Milan or EuroNight), you can check it out on www.tgv-europe.com/en
Rome-Pisa: here (as well as on other domestic journeys within Italy) you have two major options: a) visit TrenItalia website and purchase in advance discounted MINI offer tickets for high-speed/InterCity trains. MINI offer can actually give discount up to 60% and if you know your exact dates, then it's a good and cheap option for fast journeys; b) you won't need to buy anything in advance, but instead use slower Regional trains, they are much cheaper (comparing to full fare ticket for high-speed/InterCity trains). For instance in case of Rome-Pisa regional train takes around extra hour/hour and a half comparing to faster high-speed trains, but cost only 18 EUR (which is less than half price of a full fare ticket for high-speed Frecciabianca train)
Pisa-Florence-Venice: same options as above
Venice-Switzerland: unfortunately it will be difficult to travel overnight here, while in terms of ticket you again seems to have two major options: a) purchase discounted direct ticket from TrenItalia website (discount offer is called SMART and unfortunately offered not for every connection); b) purchase domestic ticket from Venice to Milan (or even the border, like Como), tricks with domestic tickets (MINI vs. regional) described above, then from Milan (which is also a great place to visit) there are much more connections to Switzerland and more chance to buy cheap SMART offer ticket.
In terms of advice on itinerary around Switzerland...hmm... difficult choice since there are way to many things to see, but if to think "mountains", then probably something like Luzern-Interlaken-Lausanne-Geneva (from here it's easy to come back to Paris) or Luzern-Bern-Geneva, thus in both cases you tend not to travel far to the north, but stay closer to central and southern Switzerland(=most interesting mountains). For domestic Swiss travel best option is SuperSaver tickets (http://www.sbb.ch/en/travelcards-and-tickets/tickets-for-switzerland/supersaver-tickets.html), Swiss railways tend to have such sales pretty often, so good chance you can catch one of those for July. regarding Switzerland-Paris: same SBB website sells discounted international tickets (can take a look at this)

For the question pass vs. point-to-point: kind of standard answer from us - pass will give you much more flexibility and you won't need to worry about missed connection etc., but at the same time smartly purchase point-to-point tickets (like MINI offer for domestic in Italy, SuperSaver for Switzerland etc.) will cost you much less in total, but might restrict you to particular timing and trains. So we would probably advise you just to visit both TrenItalia and SBB websites, check out tricks we described (maybe you'll have further questions etc.) and then make the decision about which option sounds better for you.