Sounds like the beginning of a funny joke right? No, this was not a joke, and only slightly funny -
On my way to meet up with Abby, I booked FlixBus as my transportation; a five hour ride through beautiful Swiss scenery. I failed to check the weather report, however, and also to heed reviewers' warnings of frequently delayed arrival times. I had a good experience going to and from Strasbourg so I wasn't worried.
After picking up passengers in Konstanz 25 minutes late, we drove for three minutes to Switzerland where border patrol gave us a hell of a time for an hour for reasons unknown to me. They searched the entire bus and made all the passengers line up outside with all of our luggage in front of us while a dog sniffed everything.
We stopped in Zurich to pick up more passengers and headed South towards a snowstorm that seemed to be getting thicker and thicker. We hit stand still traffic three hours in and had to backtrack and detour around a huge lake which racked on an hour and a half.
I thought they’d handled it by changing the whole route but we just intersected the same road, further south, that had standstill traffic. I didn’t know this at the moment but apparently this pass is well known for being difficult in harsh weather. In addition, a certain tunnel on the route had been closing from 10pm-5am for the past few weeks for construction. The drivers never even came on the loudspeaker to tell us anything until, at 7pm, when we’d been sitting in the sAmE sPoT for almost fOUr hOURs, a frustrated woman named Sonja picked up all her things and stomped downstairs (double decker bus). A second later a man sitting across from me goes to investigate and comes back upstairs telling everyone that there is a group of people walking to the nearest train station to find a different way to Milan. He told me about the tunnel and how he foresaw us sleeping on the bus for the night if we didn’t find an alternative.
My desire to be with Abby and reassure her that I was still alive after telling her I would arrive in Milan at 4pm (and desire to be off that stuffy bus.. and hunger) overcame my frugality, and me and three other (adventurous or crazy?) souls ran across the freeway and climbed over a snow covered concrete wall to “freedom”. The Italian, Francesco, had already drunk, according to him, three liters of beer on the bus and was in quite an entertaining state. Sonja, from Poland, had the new route figured out on her phone and was determined to make this plan work, going drill-sergeant mode. Axon, from the French region of Switzerland, was taking pictures of our escape and was just happy to be anywhere else but on that bus. We bought a train ticket going north that would bring us to a station where we could intersect the last train of the night going to Milan. The only way for us to make that train was if it was delayed 40 minutes. We knew what track the Milan train would come in on and luckily it was the same platform as our incoming train. Before even coming to a full stop on our first train, we saw the second pull in at the exact same time. That 30 meter sprint might’ve been faster than my 30 fly time from track season. . .
Not really, because we were weighed down with bags, but as Francesco wobbled up the steps with his rolling suitcase and the doors closed, we all let out a sigh of relief, gave each other high-fives, and popped open some beers. It’s amazing how four short hours of an attempt to save ourselves from this transportation nightmare made us so close. We all had some kind of work or family connection to art and design which isn’t surprising with all of us headed to the world’s fashion and design capital. Francesco was the classic Italian lady's man, trying to subtly work his magic on a conscientious, conservative, Polish Sonja. One could also say Axon was the classic impartial, educated Swiss man, asking my opinion on divisive topics and discussing thoughts about culture, language, and human mentality and downfalls. I taught them card games and we all shared laughs about our risky decisions and wonderment at whether people were still stuck on the bus somewhere in the dark. We arrived in Milan at 11:15pm and Sonja insisted I split a taxi with her to get to the hostel because she didn’t trust me walking in the sketchy areas around the train station. I couldn’t thank her enough when finally, after all her help, she also insisted on paying for me.
Was it worth the trouble? Definitely; I met three really cool Europeans along the way. I wish I knew what happened to the bus and the people on it but being in Milan was more important to me. Do I still trust FlixBus? Let's just say I'll check the weather before I take it again in the future.
