You want to get away this summer, but it feels like the odds are stacked against you. New European Union border checks are causing hours-long queues at airports, while airlines cut schedules and nudge up fares to cope with higher fuel costs. It’s a perfect storm.
Due to the crisis in the Middle East, Lufthansa has been forced to cancel 20,000 flights leading up to October. KLM has scrapped 160 European flights, with the airline planning to increase long-haul ticket prices by around R950 per round trip. And last month, Scandinavian Airlines scaled back a thousand flights.
That equates to millions of passenger seats taken off airline inventory in 2026. Please see the below article, that highlights
And yet, people still want to enjoy sunsets on the Mediterranean, oompah bands at Bavaria’s October Festival, and a peek at the Mona Lisa at the Louvre – they just don’t want the hassle that comes with flying.
This year, it’s time to leave the airport departure boards behind and try Europe’s rails, roads and ferries instead.
Grounded summer: why buses, trains and ferries win
Trains, coaches and ferries connect almost every major city across Europe. They’re usually significantly cheaper than air travel, once you factor in airport transfers and baggage fees, and they tend to run on schedule. They’re gentler on the planet too: coaches are among the most carbon-efficient ways to travel per passenger kilometre, with the Confederation of Passenger Transport reporting that a single coach can take up to 50 cars off the road. Most rail routes run on cleaner energy than aviation: In almost every scenario, switching from a plane to a train reduces your carbon emissions by 80% to 90%.
Most importantly, travelling by coach or train allows you to see the countries you’ve flown so far to visit, instead of spending it in a security queue.
For travellers, certain routes carry most of the Euro-summer traffic because they’re easy to book and link the cities most people want first.
Routes that bring a summer together
The London-Paris-Amsterdam triangle is usually the most popular entry point to Europe. Eurostar takes you from St Pancras Station in London to Gare du Nord in Paris in just over two hours: you could leave after breakfast and reach Paris by lunch.
City centre to city centre, the time and money saved on transfers often beats budget airlines. From Paris, high-speed trains reach Amsterdam in a little over three hours; overnight coaches take a little longer, but do it even cheaper.
Further east, Berlin to Prague is a four-hour hop by train or coach. Prague to Vienna is another easy trip, then Vienna to Budapest in under three hours along the Danube, with river views out the window.
If you want to stretch deeper into Central Europe on a budget, you can cross from Munich to Salzburg for a little as €9 (R171). This short but sweet under-two-hour journey trades the airport for views of rolling green fields and small Bavarian towns into Salzburg. From there, mountain lovers can take the wonderfully scenic Zurich to Milan route.
Further north, those looking for cooler, dramatic landscapes can sample Scandinavia’s finest coastal views on the Oslo to Kristiansand coach. This four-hour trip traces the fjord-lined coast, passing through Tønsberg – Norway’s oldest town, packed with viking history – and the island-dotted, colourful wooden houses of Kragerø, offering a frontline seat to spectacular Nordic scenery for a fraction of the cost of a domestic flight.
Along the Mediterranean, Barcelona-Marseille can be reached by coach within seven hours, past beaches and hilly towns. The route follows the A9 motorway, which runs parallel to the Mediterranean, offering views of the Pyrenees, the Étang de Leucate lagoons, and the coastal hills of the Languedoc region. From Marseille, you take a regional train from Marseille to Ventimiglia (a border town), where you switch to the Italian Trenitalia network. Getting from Rome to Naples takes just over an hour on high-speed trains – far quicker than the airport faff – then local connections from Sorrento to the Amalfi Coast means a switch from the train to a bus or a ferry.
In Greece, the ferry network acts as a marine highway. Ferries depart daily from Athens, primarily from the large hub of Piraeus or the closer-to-the-airport port of Rafina to Mykonos. These routes are serviced by both high-speed catamarans and larger, slower conventional ferries that offer a more scenic “slow travel” experience, with prices ranging from €40-€55 (R770-R1,060) for conventional ferries and €80+ (R1,520) for the high-speed options.
The UK has some stunning unsung arteries. Overnight coaches link Edinburgh to London, allowing you to board late, arrive early, and save a hotel night.
Connecting the dots
The admin has always been the catch: different operators, websites, languages. Platforms like Busbud cut through that, pulling thousands of bus, train and ferry options into one search so you can compare FlixBus, National Express and regional carriers without tab-hopping. And you can even use ChatGBT to make planning even easier! For the chatbot’s 800 million weekly users, mapping out a trip is now as simple as typing @busbud into their chat. You can give it a complex, highly specific prompt and the AI will use Busbud’s live global inventory of over 3 million routes to return real, ticketable results. Once the perfect route has been found, a secure handoff takes you straight to checkout to finalise the booking.
You still need to be smart. Book weeks ahead to keep fares down. Travel midweek, not on Friday afternoons. Overnight legs save accommodation and buy daylight hours. With one platform that shows what’s available this season, travel by land or sea is now more convenient.
Pack snacks, good walking shoes and a book. Load up a playlist. This summer, fly in and discover Europe the way locals do – affordably and fun, by rail, road and ferry.
