Born from a heady mixture of climate consciousness and self-castigation, two weeks ago myself and my good friend Tasha found ourselves at Victoria Coach Station, waiting to catch a bus to Krakow, Poland.
I know right.
To properly explain this situation, let's get down with some context. On the whole, wanderlust and global warming awareness do not go hand-in-hand. For someone who adores travel as fervently as I do, it is a constant moral grapple to reconcile my guilt about booking countless, cheap European flights and just as many long-haul ones, with my overwhelming desire to board them and fly off into the sunset. As it turned out, Tasha shared my inner turmoil. But unlike the 'consolidate guilt into a storable cube and repress' approach that I had been patenting, she had actually come up with a half-workable solution.
What was the solution? Well, it was, essentially, not flying ever again. Ambitious, I grant you, but a goal I am more than happy to share when it suits. So in the spirit of saving the planet, we decided to conduct an experiment: can you do a European weekend city break without flying?
(Sorry Michael O'Leary).
After a bit of research, Krakow was decided upon as the city break destination. I could go into why, but who has the time, particularly when the more pertinent issue was how the hell to get there... Trains were the obvious choice; quick, efficient and comfortable, Tash and I were immediately taken with the romantic notion of gazing out of a carriage window, watching as rolling countryside and bustling cityscapes danced their way past. And then we saw the price of the tickets. The secondary option was, unfortunately, the bus. The vision of days-on-end spent aboard a school trip-esque coach, legs crumpled into a corner, motion-sickness an ever-present fear, was only just allayed by the wondrously low price of the tickets. On the plus side though, the intermittent nature of the bus schedule did allow for a few added cultural treats along the way: a 7-hour stopover in Prague en route to Krakow, and a 17-hour one in Berlin on the way back. Our weekend city break had now morphed into a 6-day, multi-city extravaganza, but we were nothing if not flexible.
On initial sighting of the glimmeringly new, double-decker coach that was to take us as far as Prague, we felt slightly reassured with regards our general levels of comfort for the journey. This reassurance faded slightly on first meeting the bus driver, who seemed what can only be described as gratuitously angry. We climbed aboard anyway, settled ourselves in seats right at the front (which Tash assured me was the least sickness-inducing part of the bus), and waited patiently to leave London.
In a bafflingly short space of time, we'd reached Folkestone channel crossing and were being barked at by angry bus driver to disembark for passport check number 1. For a reason we never fully understood, we completely bypassed passport check number 2, and were patiently queuing to board the next Eurostar when angry bus driver (henceforth known as ABD for brevity) was heard to be loudly informing a port official that we had potentially lost two of our passengers. To cut a long story short, we only ever found one of them.
After this debacle, boarding the train was fairly swift and straightforward, and we were just about to set off for French-er climes when ABD started piping up again. This time it seemed the problem was a young guy on board our bus, who had informed ABD and various Eurostar officials that he needed to leave the train, as he was on the verve of having a panic attack. Because of some magic-circle, secret bus laws that we were never made aware of, this meant that our entire bus of fellow passengers needed to disembark, extricate ourselves from the departure area, unload our baggage and have it checked (not at all thoroughly I must say) by border control into the bargain. ABD conceded to explain these baffling occurrences to those passengers who had not initially heard, by crediting them to 'some COMPLETE IDIOT having a panic'. Compassionate as well as angry then.
A few hours down the line, and a successful (if later) channel crossing teamed with endless stretches of Belgian motorway leant the illusion of progress being made on our epic journey. Tash and I concurred that it was time to break out the bus picnic. Spirits lifted and appetites satisfied, we arrived at Bruges station. During bus journeys such as these it is normal to stop regularly, but very few last longer than a few minutes and are simply for the purpose of dropping certain passengers off and allowing others on. As Bruges was scheduled to be one such stop, it was with hefty suspicion that we were still there a good 15 minutes later... No explanation had been given, which was starting to seem like ABD's standard MO, but we could see him strutting around outside the bus in a rage-fuelled frenzy, sighing heavily, shaking his head and yammering down the phone. To add a light sprinkling of alarm to the proceedings, a couple of policemen had also rocked up and were approaching the bus.
Remarkably, the same thing had happened again. But, get this, with a different passenger. Guess what? We all had to get off again for further lacklustre bag-checks. We would NOT have wanted to be ABD's wife when he got home that night. Or any night to be honest. What was beginning to become a slight concern for Tash and I, even more so than the seemingly fragile mental state of our fellow bus passengers, was the fact that we were due to transfer onto a different bus at Cologne Airport, a stop we should have shortly been reaching, panic attacks and bag checks not withstanding. The transfer window (if you will) was a good 1.5 hours, but a lot of that had undoubtedly already been eaten into. Accepting there was literally nothing we could do about it however, we settled back down for hours of more anonymous European motorway.
Perhaps it was the overindulging on Quorn snacks, cherry tomatoes and marmite rice cakes, the incessant swaying motion of second-storey coach travel, the anxiety built up from watching endless other passengers being abandoned across different bits of Europe, or all of the above, but by the time we reached Cologne Airport, I felt violently sick. It is important to point out that my sickness was not from lack of bus experience as (not to brag) I have experienced long-haul coach travel on 6 different continents and felt ne'er even a flicker in the stomach. Nevertheless, it was all I could do on disembarking to stop myself hurling all over the baggage trolleys. On the plus side of life, Flixbus (the bus company we were using for the majority of the journey) had sorted out the issue of missing the connection at Cologne (which, of course, we had), by booking us onto a later bus, and so I had exactly 1 hour and 40 minutes to shake off the extreme nausea. Firstly I tried sitting outside, but the combination of car fumes and a friendly but linguistically-limited German guy incessantly trying to strike up a conversation with me proved too distracting, and so we both headed inside to freshen up in the airport toilets and swig down a medicinal peppermint tea.
By the time we clambered onto the next bus, which was already full of soundly sleeping bus-packers, the nausea had alleviated slightly, but was immediately overtaken by extreme tiredness and subsequently, sleep. The next thing we knew, we were arriving at Nuremberg and unceremoniously stumbled off into the deeply unwelcoming bus station, along with assorted bags and a new bus friend called Varsha. To one side of the marginally covered, rusty benches was a greasy and faded looking fast-food shop, manned by an equally greasy and faded looking cashier. To the other were some particularly grim toilets. This was the setting of the next 2.5 hours, and then another bonus hour when we discovered our next bus was delayed.
Eventually, we reached Prague. Only a good 5 hours later than planned.
This hefty loss of time rendered my carefully crafted, whistle-stop Prague itinerary fairly redundant, and made way for what was essentially a mad, Total Wipeout style scramble for Prague's most tourist-tastic sights. During our two-hour Prague visit, we managed to see:
1. Wenceslas Square
2. The Astronomical Clock
This is arguably one of the most iconic pieces of European architecture, and is just as intricately impressive in reality. Even when viewed only for a maximum 30 seconds.
3. The Old Town Square
As cliched as it may sound, the Old Town Square could easily be the setting for an enchanting fairytale. Except maybe a more contemporary version, with numerous drunken stag-parties instead of one handsome prince.
4. Some incredible pastries
5. Charles Bridge
We made it halfway across so that we could see the spires of the cathedral in the distance and do a quick Google Maps 360 of its interior before turning back. That still counts right?
Before long though, we were back on a bus and heading for Krakow...