@moof I agree. It appears to me that those bus connections serve the market of lowest-wage / migrant workers who cannot afford even the low-cost airline fares — but who are at the same time absolutely essential to the functioning of the local economy. In the sixties and seventies, when “Gastarbeiter” were an important part of the German “Wirtschaftswunder”, there were direct trains from the industrial centres where they worked (Ruhr, Stuttgart) to Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece. Today, everybody else takes the plane.