i bought my ticket! ahhhh!

[yourfacehxc]

i bought my ticket last night. how terrifying!
i will be flying into paris on 1/26 and flying out of madrid on 2/16...can i get a little help with a few things?
i'm a bit confused as to how traveling around by train works. so there's the eurail pass which allows you to purchase a number of days of traveling to a number of bordering countries, right? what exactly does that mean? in other words will i take the train from paris on let's say 2/3 to amsterdam and that'll count as one day of travel to one neighboring country, correct? but will this really be a FULL day of travel? will it only take a few hours or should i expect to be sitting around all day? i'm just confused about this whole thing....what if i want to explore smaller cities around amsterdam or any of the other cities i visit? is my pass valid for those trains too? do those count as a travel day? sorry, for all the questions...i don't feel like this has been well explained on the eurail website. many unanswered questions with this area....anyone know of good websites that explain well?
also, any suggestions as to where i should go? here's what i'm thinking....fly into paris on 1/26, spend 4-5 days there
train to amsterdam for 2-3 days
train to berlin for 3-4 days
train to switzerland or austria....any suggestions for which is cooler? better cities to visit?? help! for a few days
train to venice and rome for a week combined likely
train/boat to barcelona (possibly) and then madrid where i will fly out of.
what do you think?

also, for booking my eurail pass once i buy it do i need to make reservations for when i get there? the thing is i want a very open ended trip...i want to wake up and decide that today i will go to rome you know?

sorry for all the questions! thanks!