[gerl1ng]

Well, you could of course use some tickets from other operators in the same region. In NRW there is the handy eezy NRW[0] ticket system where you just pay the kilometers travelled "how the bird flies". So even the connections that would be expensive otherwise could be cheap.

I use it sometimes for the last bit of my long distance travel if I visit my parents (not directly in VRR region but in Regionalverkehr Münsterland (RMV)). It states that it works for all stops within NRW - which is annoying as one of the busses I could take actually goes to Osnabrück (Niedersachsen) and I cannot use - even though it's actually operated by the NRW regional transit provider.

Overall public transit is / was a mess in germany and 9€ Ticket really was an eye opener on how easy it could be to hop on and off of everything that's moving however you like.

[0] https://www.vrr.de/de/fahrplan-mobilitaet/eezy-vrr/