As I’m meeting up with Richard in Munich later today, I needed to get from Wrocław last night and the most efficient way of doing that was the direct Flixbus between the two cities. I’ve had mixed experiences with Flixbus, but I thought that it would be worth the risk as the timings worked out well to save me getting a hotel for the evening. Here’s the rather glamorous bus station in Wrocław, although it’s more a shopping centre than a bus station. It’s relatively new and it apparently replaced a ramshackle and disorganised bus station that was previously on the site.
And here’s the grand central area of the shopping centre element, which was rather nicer than the bus station. Ridiculously, the bus station toilets are chargeable and the shopping malls ones are free, so I walked the extra 50 metres to go to the latter.
The coach stops are in the downstairs of the building, but everything was clearly signed. I was pleased that it seemed logical, it’s not always the case.
There we go, stand 7 and I discovered something that I didn’t know, which is that Monachium is the Polish name for Munich.
The coach comes sweeping into stand 6, but that’s near enough. There were two drivers (well, one driver and one helping) and they were friendly and personable.
On board and I had a compulsory free seat reservation which I sometimes think are more hassle than they’re worth. Some people were put next to others despite the coach being nearly empty, but I was fortunate to have no-one next to me for the entire journey so there was plenty of space. There were only two stops which were Dresden and Nuremberg (well, and to fill the thing up with diesel and for the police check).
It was clean on board, but the tray was sticky.
The charging point being down there was a bit of a hassle as neither of my cables were long enough to even tuck my phone into the seat pocket. Instead, I charged my power bank and then charged my phone from the power bank.
Leaving Wrocław I tried to take a photo of the sunset, but, having thought about it, the foreground doesn’t look very decadent.
The police board at the German border, which I’m not sure is entirely commonplace, but it’s why Flixbus has to check passports and ID documents before anyone boards a cross-border route. The policeman was particularly interested in my passport with all its stamps, but not concerned enough to hold the coach up. There was a stop for diesel just before we crossed the Polish/German border and there must have been some sort of issue as there was lots of shouting about and moving the coach about the place. Someone wanted to get off for a cigarette, but this was refused in the middle of a petrol station.
And safely in Munich after the stops at Dresden and Nuremberg. The coach was always on time, or within a couple of minutes, and it was clean and comfortable. The free wi-fi was a bit limited in terms of the amount of data, but I had free roaming so it didn’t matter. The drivers were friendly, there was plenty of space and it was a reasonable experience for the £45 I paid. This was I accept a little bit expensive for a coach trip, but it saved a hotel and didn’t seem unreasonable. I got a sufficient amount of sleep on board and it was a generally very quiet coach which made that easier. Based on this experience, I’m becoming a little more confident to use Flixbus a little more often rather than just as an operator of last resort. Oh, and the coach station at Munich wasn’t as new and shiny as the one in Wrocław and it did look a bit like it might fall down soon.