This post is not only about my experiences with the transport company mentioned in the title, but also some other bus lines, trains and even planes. Gotta love travelling!
SLEEPING BEAUTIES
Yesterday, as I was returning from Munich to Ljubljana (it's a five-hour drive) on FlixBus. I was exhausted from an exciting concert (yes, I got a photo with the band!!!), walking around for hours and not sleeping, taking the bus from our capital to the capital of Bavaria and actually relying on myself (I'm not used to travelling completely alone) and waiting for the bus for three hours in the cold with a dead phone battery all in one day, so falling asleep on the bus wasn't a challenge. I got on at three in the morning and got a solid two hours sleep when a man's alarm clock woke me up. I'd probably have no trouble getting back to sleep if the sleeping beauty of a man (head tilted back, saliva dripping from his mouth) woke up and turned the volume down. But given that I wrote this rant, it's pretty obvious that it wasn't that easy, isn't it? The man just slept through it for five minutes until it switched itself off. Then it rang again and the owner just snored through it until it stopped. The cycle repeated itself four times. By the time someone finally woke him up and asked him to turn the alarm off, I - and most of the bus, apart from the drooling Sleeping Beauty to be precise - was wide awake and unable to get back to sleep.
Now, this guy's main problem may not have been snoring, but it was certainly annoying as hell. I understand that you can't really control snoring, especially in an environment like a bus that isn't ideal for sleeping, but knowing that doesn't change the pettiness that grows inside me when people around me start gasping for air as if they've been drowning for the past week. And yes, I always use headphones when I'm on the bus.
DELICIOUS FOOD
The only thing that probably annoys me more than snoring in the context of FlixBussing (I'm a genius, everyone should start using that term) is loud chewing. If snoring is more or less uncontrollable, chewing like a three-year-old on a mission to break the record for farthest food spit is always an option (assuming you are a physically and mentally "healthy" person).
When I flew back from Gambia in August, having already had a long layover in Madrid in the middle of the night, where I was double-checked for drugs, I was what you might call unbearable. I was lucky enough to be flying alone so no one else had to deal with my bad temper, but I swear I came close to punching the woman next to me who was chewing loudly. Let's translate the relevant part of my diary, which I wrote on the plane, just so you can see how annoyed I was:
"It's half past one, we're about to land. The plane is already descending. I slept a lot. The woman next to me is chewing so loudly as she eats crackers that I want to punch her. Wait, no, it's just some pumpkin seeds. Violence is not the answer. Rumour has it".
LIVE CONCERTS AND/OR CINEMAS
Another thing that people can control but choose not to do is play music loudly. I mean, I could do it because my taste in music is elite and everyone would probably just vibe, but other people... well, they should behave (sarcasm, by the way). The same goes for Instagram Reels, TikToks and even full films. Wired headphones cost less than 5 euros, so please invest in our (other passengers') fragile mental wellbeing.
COMFORTABLE!
Where to start with this part? There are so many stories about it, but I'll just describe the two: 1. When I was travelling with a friend from Milan to Trieste (from concert to concert, of course), we planned to take a direct train. It was only on the train that we realised that the friend had bought tickets for the wrong month - some other people were sitting in "our seats" (how embarrassing). We were well underslept at this point, as it took us three hours to get back to the hotel from the concert in Milan and we only got about two hours sleep, but we had no choice but to make three changes with local trains that were completely overcrowded with Italians, so we just slept on the floor next to the automatic door, hugging our laguagge and politely apologising to the locals who spoke angry Italian to us - fair enough, they were trying to get to school and work and we were rather impractically positioned.
2. You get your space. I get it, it's a small space and for people with various disabilities and those of larger stature it might be even more uncomfortable than for others. But if you're an average-sized person and you refuse to hand over your luggage or put it on the special shelf, you're an idiot (I said what I said): a woman once put her huge bag on the seat next to her so that it covered half of mine. I sat like that for ten hours (no, I don't know how to communicate). She also used both chargers: one for her vape, which was already full according to the green light that blinded me, and one for her phone.
LAYOVERS
Last but not least: layovers are hell. Yesterday I froze my ass off outside for three hours from midnight until three in the morning because they close the main bus station in Munich at midnight. I was out of battery (as The Reytons sing, sorry I can't get it out of my head) and bored and everything hurt and people were too loud but it was also too quiet so I got sleepy but I was the only woman for a while so I didn't really feel safe sleeping. At Madrid airport I somehow managed to do ten thousand steps in four hours walking around even though most of the shops and restaurants were closed. In Vilnius, we stayed in a grocery store for the wait and I was so hungry for "real" food (not just snacks and dry bread) that I ate an entire block of raw tofu.
Once again, you have to love travelling!
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