So I’ll be honest. We booked the Eurolines bus thinking “this will be great, we get a free nights accommodation and really cheap travel” but also secretly wondering “is this a mistake? can bus travel actually be good?.”

After booking not one, but three journeys we decided to trawl the net and see what other people thought. Imagine my horror (and amusement) when I found a post from Jonny Orr. I read it, almost doubling with laughter, from the floor because I couldn’t stand, to Justin who was quietly freaking out.

Never one to pull out, we arrived at the Prague bus station ready to ride to Munich. Surprisingly it was fairly good; the bus wasn’t crowded, the driver spoke a tiny bit of English and we had a fairly good nap, arriving on time in Munich. After that we felt a lot better, that is, until we tried to go from Munich to Amsterdam.

So we arrive at the station and the ‘bus’ is actually a tiny minivan. The driver manages to convey that we will be swapping to a large bus at some point in the future. We all pile on, and luckily the luggage just fits. Then we start driving… didn’t take the gorgeous boyfriend long to start being his ‘gorgeous’ self. “She is stealing us” he proclaims loudly from the back. As other passengers start to giggle, I get him to promise that he wouldn’t start his favourite game of ‘nationality sterotyping’ – the one that got us some very dirty looks on the EuroStar to Paris.

Sure enough, not 15min go by before he announces “Looks like we are all going to Dachau.” All it took was a glare and a firm “hush” for him to say “what? it’s like I named a concentration camp or something…” When I confirmed that, yes, Dachau was a concentration camp, he did manage to button his lips and get a decent nap in.

So we finally got dropped to a bigger bus in the middle of nowhere. The driver did not speak a word of English but we didn’t mind, happily got on board and then started driving towards Amsterdam. It wasn’t until we arrived in Frankfurt at midnight that we realised we needed to change buses.  Worse still, the driver had our transfer ticket, but because we printed it on the same page, he was refusing to give it to us!

I tried to negotiate using some pathetic German and then luckily a young English guy who spoke almost fluent German stepped in. After arguing for a long time he still refused to give us the other half of the page. Just as he was leaving (and we were panicking about being stuck in Frankfurt), he rudely tears mine in half and gives me my ticket. Would he give the gorgeous boyfriend his? Absolutely NOT!

In spite of this we did make it on the bus to Amsterdam. The bus itself was badly overcrowded but it was an OK journey to the station. The worst was, of course, yet to come; Amsterdam to Luxembourg.

We started out thinking this was the best journey yet. We had the backseat to ourselves, the bus only had a few other people, it was the cheapest ticket (at 11 euros) and after watching a couple of episodes of Two Pints while drinking Diet Coke and eating chippies I thought this might be ‘the’ way to travel. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong!!!!! Enter Drunk Man. Who walks the entire length of the bus, passing numerous empty seats. Who walks straight up to me and starts speaking in rapid Flemish. Who is spraying spittle while he talks. Gesticulating at my bags on the sea. That’s right, he wants to sit with us…

So I reluctantly move my bags across, allowing him to sit in the middle seat, between me and the gorgeous boyfriend who is sleeping. Justin proceeds to wake up and ask the guy, then mime to the guy, that he would prefer to sit next to me, giving the man access to the back corner. Little did we realise this is exactly what he wanted. Out comes the 2L of coke, the travelling mug and an entire bottle of mysterious, strong smelling alcohol. It just got worse from there. He managed to drink more than half the bottle in about 30 min. Then he started talking to us in Flemish. Then he got angry that we wouldn’t talk with him. Drunk, smelly and rude is a nicer description than he deserves.

I’ll spare you the details of the next hour, suffice to say that we were very glad to get off the bus in Luxembourg. This experience is up there with the night we had snoring man and angry man, and the night some random horny *naked* guy decided to try and jump in my bed.

More travelling adventures later