First, there are the usual airline carriers. They are fast, safe, and reliable. But they are also pricey and may not always be an option. The second choice would be to go with a budget airline, but their reliability is often in question and in order to get the best deal you may have to fly on dates that do not cohere with your long anticipated travel plans. Fortunately, there are two other very good options to keep your plans afloat without sinking your wallet.

Trains

Fast, safe, and often less expensive than traditional airline carriers trains are how Europeans travel within Europe - and who better to learn from than Europeans themselves? Trains are a great option because not only do they provide an affordable way between almost all cities, but they run more frequently than planes and afford you the opportunity to see more of the countries you are visiting. In fact, an entire trip can revolve around a train trip. Perhaps you wish to retrace the path of the Orient Express. By train it's easy to get off at any stop and stay for a few hours, then hop on the next train to wherever you were going. Non-reserved tickets can be purchased for almost all trains giving the bearer an option of several months within which to travel. The flexibility and affordability are hard to beat!

So why chose anything other than trains for travel within Europe? Well, when trains are an option, you shouldn't! But sometimes towns are too small or too remote for train stations. In that case, take the bus!

Bus 

Often regarded as unsafe travel in Eastern European countries, busses - minibuses included - are safe ways to travel to areas where trains don't go. Busses are ultra affordable and occasionally good alternatives to trains when traveling on a really tight budget. Busses run very frequently and offer smooth traveling - most busses are well designed for comfort, even during extended trips. In fact, many conclude on the end of their bus journey that even Polish minibuses are superior to the Greyhound services available in the United States! The one drawback to busses is that bus drivers rarely speak English and stops are usually announced only in the native language so riding prepared is a must!

For great places to travel by train or bus within Europe check out this list of undiscovered travel destinations.

Whether by plane, train, or bus, happy travels!

I chose to go by bus. I'd arrived in November on a boat; I was going to be doing a lot of train travel so I opted for bus. It was scheduled to leave at 3 pm, in the heat of a scalding afternoon, but as I waited with the other passengers in what shade we could find near Panjim bus stop, 3 pm soon became 4 pm. Then at 5 pm I knew that the real-time departure was imminent because lots of restless men got up to pee quite earnestly against the bus, against the walls of a shop and up against the few trees that lined the road out of town.

It took quite a while to load the bus. My bag along with a lot of other stuff had to go on top. We all tried to be the first to get on and I lost out to the women. I was fortunate to get a window seat, though the seat itself was no more than wooden slats with a plastic backrest. I was towards the back of the bus, above the rear wheels, not the best seat.

It was good to be at a window though, for the sake of fresh air, but also so that I could buy food without having to forsake my seat, and I stocked up with smoosas and pakhoras to see me through the long night, bartering with young boys through the window.

Out along the road I got to see places trains never went. We came eventually to a river just as dusk was falling but there was no bridge and the bus with its full compliment of people, animals and luggage drove onto a makeshift raft which was pulled to the other bank by water buffalo. Most people got off to walk about the edges of the raft and it wasn't till I joined them that I realised the angle of tilt that we were sitting at. No-one else seemed to be in the least bit concerned that the slightest ripple in the water would tip us all in.

On into the night I had to close the window I was beside to keep out the terribly cold air. We stopped quite late at a village where I bought coconut milk and biscuits, and as we started off again I was attacked by waves of murderous nausea. I concentrated hard, fixing my gaze on the light above the driver's head and managed somehow to stave off the compulsion to vomit.

Unfortunately the man in the seat behind me didn't try as hard as I did, and he vomited quite comprehensively down the back of my neck. The warm slime slithered down my shirt, on down my back, and squashed in between the side of the bus and a hefty, bearded and slumbering Giant Haystacks of a man there was no action I could take.

My clothes were on top of the bus; I had nothing even to wipe my neck with, and as the cold night air took its toll on the vomit I ended up stuck to the plastic covering that was nailed down over the seat's backrest.

I sat another five hours like that, thankful only for the fact that the stench of vomit didn't travel round to my face but seemed to stay firmly behind me where it belonged.

At length Bombay appeared under the wheels of the bus, but no apology ever came from the man behind. When I got off and found my bag I looked around for a café to sit in, to stretch my legs in and to eat in. Even at that very early hour plenty of shops were already open, and I found what I was looking for.

I soon settled myself at a table and sat dazed for a while, not minding that no-one had come to serve me. A man came out of a door in the back and looked over at me. I caught his eye and he smiled and retreated. He came back with some others and they all stared for a while, smiling, then disappeared. Things seemed a bit weird, and I soon noticed a strange smell in the café that reminded me of my grandfather's workshop.

Soon it all came together. This was no café, it was a furniture store, with the tables and chairs all set out not to eat at, but for sale.

So no breakfast yet, but at least I got to stretch my legs.

I found a hotel. Vik, the man I presume owned the place assured me of a hot shower in my room which sounded too good to be true and it was. There was a shower but it was communal, in an alcove just along the corridor. In fact to call it a shower was just a bit misleading; it was a tap set about three feet off the floor.

I didn't care. It didn't matter at that point who was walking along the corridor past the uncurtained “shower” cubicle because I was still covered in stinking, hardened vomit. Leaving my clothes in my room and taking a towel with me I crouched under the tap to soak myself. Needless to say the water was freezing cold. Needless to say I was past caring. Once I was properly soaked all over I stood up and turned the tap off so that the water would stop running down the sloping corridor into my room as it had begun to, and I got to work with soap and finger nails.

It was so good to shift all that stale vomit. I even rubbed my back up and down the rough wall to dislodge the bits I couldn't reach, and still people kept passing by along the corridor, some stopping to look, some to chat. So what.

Soon it became time to rinse away the foul, soapy scum that was decorating my body. Squatting down I turned the tap on again hoping to be quick enough not to flood my room too severely, but no water came out. I kicked the pipe, turned the tap in all directions and expressed my frustration to two men standing talking in a doorway down the hall. They suggested no solution to the problem, didn't even offer to get Vik for me. That was okay though because from what I had already gleaned about Vik I didn't really want him seeing me in the shower, offering to hose me down. There was not much I could do, and I began to feel incredibly foolish standing in the hallway clad only in the soapy remains of someone else's dinner. All I could do was lift my towel and head back to my room to dry myself and put clean clothes on a very unclean body.

The transport office was the usual bureaucratic challenge I've come to expect and enjoy, and which I always mistakenly think I've learned how to handle until I open my mouth. Why an office for one small bus was necessary remains a bit of a mystery, but at least it offered a blank wall to pee against which is what people seem to do in India as departure times arrive and pass. Inside the gloomy office I noticed first the mandatory, garlanded portrait of JFK with smoldering sticks of incense held in place among the faded marigolds. Underneath the hanging portrait a large, black-haired lady in a purple sari was installed on a wobbly seat behind an enormous, empty, dusty desk.

There seemed to be sari everywhere, acres of it, as if the lady had taken it all off to track down a flea that had been bothering her all morning, but had been taken unawares by the appearance of an unexpected and unwelcome customer, and she'd had to wrap up quickly without paying due attention to proper anchoring. Now the sari was coming undone, and purple, silky cloth and lighter-coloured lacy stuff was gradually colonizing the desk and cascading onto the floor around her feet.

I couldn't tell if the lady was embarrassed, but she was certainly uncomfortable, so I stated my business:

“At what time does it leave for the airport, the next bus?”

Hearing the question asked out loud made me aware of how awkwardly I had phrased it, but it didn't matter because when I looked directly into her face to pose the question I realized that the lady was drunk, and judging by the furtiveness of her expression and the furtiveness of the man who I soon noticed lurking in the darkness of a doorway behind her, I guessed that it was certainly not for the purposes of tracking down a flea that her sari had been misarranged.

The lady kept her composure and applied herself to the task I had set her. She took a deep breath and filled her chest, pushing it further over the desk towards the front door, and with it a few more strands of errant sari. Then she unlocked and pulled open a very stiff drawer and heaved out an enormous book which she slapped down onto the desk in front of her, sending clouds of dust and weevil-like creatures in my direction. She seemed to take some perverse pleasure in my spluttering and for a while it looked like she was going to lift the volume and slap it down even harder until she thought again and continued with what she was paid to do. The drawer was then banged shut with similar vigor, and locked, and the keys were returned to a pouch somewhere within the folds of the ever unraveling sari.

She cleared her throat and began to consult the book, a timetable I supposed. It took her some time to make up her mind about which page of the book would be relevant to the business in hand, but after a while she settled on the page that the book seemed to fall open at of its own will, as if it was offering a bit of help without the lady having to compromise herself by admitting that she was hopelessly lost. Her stained finger ran up and down the lines of Devangiri script which seemed to make as much sense to her as it did to her fingers or to me. At last a decision seemed to have been arrived at and the book was slammed shut in triumph scattering more dust and insects in my direction.

The keys were retrieved from the folds of the still-loosening sari, but not from quite the same place they had originally been put, and the drawer was opened, the book returned, the drawer relocked and the keys shoved underneath her not-so-small rear after an aborted attempt to find another safe fold in the sari. Throughout the key-locating exercise the lady engaged my eyes with her stare to keep them distracted from the muddle that was taking place around her midriff, cleavage and behind, and she obviously thought I had noticed nothing amiss. She even included a few muttered asides to whoever was lurking in the next room, while keeping an imbecilic smile fixed around her podgy face.

Eventually the lady spoke to me, wearing a look on her face that told me she had forgotten what she had just read in the timetable, and she said nothing for a while, looking quite vacant. I wondered about the need for the timetable, given that the only route the office was responsible for was the route that a single bus worked to and from the airport ten times every day. I wondered about a lot of things, but especially about the information I needed to help me get to the Syrian Arab check-in desk at the airport before anyone else. At last the answer to my original and almost forgotten question arrived, though only after a lot of throat-clearing and chest-filling:

“The next bus to the airport has just left.”

London is the eternal metropolis, a cultural hive, and a crazy global village. Through all the myriad of hustle and bustle on the streets, you could at one time, briefly escape by reaching out and leaping onto a moving bus. The famous Route master bus didn't have doors, just the welcoming smile of a bus conductor ushering you in an empty seat. The conductor would pull a cord twice attached to a loud bell, which would indicate we were moving closer home in a comfortable swinging fashion. Turning and twisting along the all too familiar London roads - Route master style.

This famous Iconic bus built in 1958 to 1968 has always given me fond memories around our culturally diverse city. The buses unmistakable design and color could always be noticed speeding up through the avenues and the free for all Piccadilly Circus roundabout. Now that symbol of unique British travel has been partially phased out. They are now being replaced by what the majority of adolescents describe as, the bendy bus. A so called modern bus, which has the appearance of two train carriages with tires, and held together in the middle with a rubber concertina curtain.

Snaking along, one of its many London routes from East London to Central West London, Oxford Circus. At times, moving slowly in a bending and warping motion held in traffic like the tail of a contented cat. This ungraceful bus has become a true cultural reflect of the world; the Benetton adverts dream. Imagine the indigenous peoples of Somalia, East African, Indian, and Bangladesh boarding from East London. Touching their Oyster payment swipe cards onto the yellow sensor pad and searching for space to sit. Further along the journey we have the Malaysian, Thai, and Chinese squeezing into space. Heading towards East Central London is the Lithuanian, Polish, French, Portuguese, and Brazilians. As we enter West London and Central West, we have the tourists from all corners of the globe. An ensemble of the world packed tightly together as daily travel companions.

A few things have changed for the Route master legacy - only if you were to compare our new bendy bus. There is no longer a top deck of the bus. The bus conductor is now a bright yellow sensor pad. The bus driver just drives when he is ready, with no, 'we're ready to go bell!' As a young boy, I was amazed at the different people I could see from all over the world visible from outside the rectangle bus window, with my mom. Today, everyone is together with me, all that much closer, as one, tourist looking at tourist. I wonder if there was a bus conductor how many languages could they say, “tickets please!” This would be impressive.