My Experience Traveling With FlixBus In Europe
Recently, I went on a two-week adventure in Europe hitting multiple destinations and spending between 2 to 3 days in each place.
I started off in Amsterdam, Holland, and went all the way down to Vienna, Austria.
This wasn’t my first time backpacking in Europe, but it was, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most remarkable.
When I started planning this trip, I knew that one of my biggest goals was to keep it low on costs because my budget was very tight. At the end of the day, I’m just a backpacker, and spending very little when traveling is always important for me.
So, I knew that choosing an expensive means of transportation wouldn’t be a good idea at all. So, that’s when I did my research and chose to travel FlixBus for the first time.
The price…
The first thing that caught my attention was the price I’d pay for each ticket. It is that cheap.
A single train ride in Europe wouldn’t cost less than 40 euros, but a one-way bus ticket from FlixBus can cost as low as 5 euros. And if paying less is one of your biggest priorities, this can be an amazing option.
The practicality…
Traveling by plane sometimes can be a pain because we know what comes with the experience.
Airports are often far from the city center, you always have to arrive at least two hours before your flight, and you have to go through security and, if you’re traveling internationally, you have to go through immigration. All of this can take up so much of your time and give you such a headache when traveling.
Traveling by train is way less bureaucratic and stressful, but still, they can cost a lot of money, and train stations can be a little far from the city center as well. Plus, I find these stations very confusing especially if you don’t speak the language of the country you’re visiting.
Looking for an easier alternative to travel is always a good idea. This is why I find it so easy to travel by bus.
Bus terminals are always, or at least most of the time, located right in the city center. I went to 6 countries on this last trip and all of the bus terminals where FlixBus would be departing or arriving were located in the heart of the city center.
This made my trip so much easier to manage because I wouldn’t have to worry about long walks or paying hundreds of euros for a cab. I was wrongly told that FlixBus drop their passengers in the middle of nowhere far from everything else. After talking to so many people who had used FlixBus and getting to use its service myself, I realized that this is a lie that they’ll drop you off far from everything else.
The stories…
Before traveling with FlixBus of course I did my research and talked to people who had already used its service before.
And of course, I heard very different stories based on who I asked.
What I mean by this is that everybody will have a completely different opinion on what the quality of their service really is because they will have standards that may or may not match with what FlixBus offers.
For instance, if you’re someone who’s more used to traveling first class, business class, planes or trains, or if you’re not so used to big crowds and people from all different walks of life, you may probably see traveling with FlixBus as a nightmare. Not because the service is bad, but because you’re used to a completely different type of service.
When I traveled with FlixBus, I saw mostly young solo travelers who wouldn’t even have a suitcase because they’d be carrying a backpack with them (like me), couples, and people who looked very diverse in general.
If you’re not used to that, you can have an entirely different opinion on the service, and unfortunately, some people might even have a racist/xenophobic opinion about the service.
This is what happened to me when I tried to hear the stories before traveling with them. Before booking my tickets, I talked with a few locals asking them what they think about FlixBus, and their opinions shocked me because they clearly showed me that they lived in their own bubble and were not used to traveling by bus. In fact, they weren’t used to traveling at a low cost at all.
If you’re that type of person, FlixBus ain’t for you.
But is it really good, Gabriel?
Well, it’s a bus. You’re not traveling with a fancy private bus company. It’s very okay and doable.
Would I recommend it?
Absolutely.
The bad side of traveling with it though…
Plugs on the bus: Not all buses have a plug for you to connect your phone, so make sure you bring your portable power bank.
Wi-Fi: Not all buses have Wi-Fi, and in the ones that do, the connection is really bad. So, if you’re not from Europe and need a connection to look at Google Maps or something like that, I always recommend people get a local European SIM card.
Seats: People will sit on random seats even when they were assigned to sit on a certain seat. And that is a pain in the ass. I wish people could just sit where they were assigned to, but they will just sit anywhere they want. I saw this being done mostly by couples or families. Because they wanted to sit together, they’d just sit anywhere.
Language: Not every bus driver speaks English or even the language of the country where the bus is departing from. In the Netherlands, for instance, the driver didn’t speak English or Dutch. He could only speak Spanish and that made everybody a little confused because we were afraid we were getting on the wrong bus since the driver couldn’t tell us if we were due to the fact he couldn’t speak English. What did I do in this case? Well, that’s what Google Translate is for. I translated what I wanted to say and made sure to facilitate the communication. This is 2022 and, though it may be uncomfortable, it’s not the end of the world when we find someone who can’t speak the languages we speak. There’s always a way to communicate.
Things you should know…
1- Know that the bus will have a number and a final destination (that may not be your destination). This information will be in your ticket so you should look at it. For instance, let’s say that the bus number is 299 and you’re leaving from Amsterdam and you’re going to Brussels. You’re going to Brussels, but this route’s final destination will be Luxembourg. It will have a stop in Brussels, but it’s not exclusively just traveling from Amsterdam to Brussels. So, don’t panic when you see the sign that says BUS 299 TO LUXEMBOURG. Yes, this is your bus. Your destination may be one of the thousands of stops that this bus will have.
2- With that being said, know that they will have multiple stops. As I mentioned above, the bus won’t be running exclusively from the city you’re departing and going to the city you’re going. It has probably started its journey way before you started yours and it may finish way further from where you will get off.
3- There are two tickets. One that you receive right away when you purchase your ticket, and the other you might receive one or two days before your trip. The second one, which looks like a boarding pass, is the one that has the address of the bus terminal, the number of the bus as well as the information that says what its final destination is. It will also have a QR code on the ticket. This second ticket is more important because it will show the driver if you purchased a ticket with a checked-in bag or not.
4- Expect it to be late. It will be late sometimes and all the times it was late, I received an email and a text message informing me that the bus was running late. When I went from Bern, Switzerland to Vienna, Austria the bus was 1 hour late. It was a pain in the ass to wait for the bus this whole time.
However, on the other hand, when they’re not late, they will be extremely punctual and strict. If you are the one who is late and the bus isn’t, well, you will miss it. They won’t care.
5- Not always you will have to go through immigration (Of course, it depends on where you’re going. For instance, going from Luxembourg to Bern, Switzerland I needed to show an immigration officer my passport at some point. Switzerland isn’t part of the EU, so people had to show their passports). So, make sure you always bring your passport.
A note on that: Know your rights and fight for them. I had a very unpleasant situation on my trip from Luxembourg to Bern, Switzerland. When I showed my passport to the bus driver (I was trying to get on the bus), he started acting as if I wouldn’t be allowed to board the bus because I had a Brazilian passport. He asked me for a visa and if I didn’t show it to him, I wouldn’t be able to get on the bus.
As I know my rights, I know that this is extremely xenophobic and wrong. It wasn’t his job as a bus driver to ask me for a visa stamped on my passport. His job as a bus driver is to make sure every passenger has a passport in case they are stopped by immigration at some point in the trip. It’s only an official immigration officer’s job to demand a passenger have a visa. Not even the police in Europe are authorized to demand that people walk with their passports to prove that they are either citizens or legal immigrants.
I told him all of this and he still insisted. I made a scene and demanded my rights be respected. This driver was trying to mess with the wrong bitch.
First things first, as a Brazilian, I don’t even need a visa to travel and stay in Europe for up to 3 months. Secondly, I have an Irish Residence Permit which I got when I moved to Dublin 6 months ago. So, I am a legal resident in Ireland and Ireland is part of Europe. But still, I did not have to show it to him whatsoever because it was not his job to confiscate my legal documentation. You’re supposed to show your passport when you travel only as a form of identification. It’s not up to a bus driver to demand I have a visa. Thirdly, there are no such things as a European visa. Visas are documents you get from one certain country, not from a whole continent.
Of course, he treated all the Europeans one way and the Latinos and Africans the other. But I stood up and got on the bus without showing him my Irish Residence Permit because I know my rights. And I only showed it to the immigration officer when it was time to do so.
So, Latinos, I’m speaking to you all: You all know that we’re treated differently in white spaces. So, make sure you know your rights and don’t let anybody ruin your experience. If I had been silent, I would have missed my trip and not gotten on the bus because the driver was extremely intimidating. If I had given in, he wouldn’t have let me get on the bus.
Thank you so much for reading my article today!
Have you ever traveled with FlixBus?
Did I miss anything?
Let me know in the comments if you have any other tips. I’d love to hear from you!
Don’t forget to follow me on Medium.