From the idyllic Greek islands to the fertile plains of southern Hungary, a pileup of people impatient to cross seas and borders produced tense standoffs and desperate flights as migrants sought to bypass registration systems that have broken down amid the crush of new arrivals.

At the Serbian-Hungarian border, hundreds of people chose to dash into a cornfield as police looked on rather than sleep another night on the patch of dirt where they had been confined while they waited to be registered.

Nashat Murad, a 28-year-old lawyer from Damascus, Syria, evaded police by slipping over coils of razor wire at the border, leaving his fingers covered in bright red puncture wounds.

"Just let us cross to Germany," he said as he jostled with other migrants to board a westbound train at the Budapest station. "We've already suffered a lot."