My relocation is not a typical one, I spend time in my home country as well as in Germany. The distance between Munich and my home city is a mere 400 kilometres, which means I can travel home often. I have the added bonus of working for a subsidiary of a Slovenia based company, so I often visit my home city also to meet and work in the HQ office. At first it was expected that I would spend less time abroad, but it turned out it makes much more sense that I am close to the market, customers and people, than to work remotely most of the time. In the first few months I travelled home very often, almost every weekend as before we arranged all the operations and built a team, there was little sense for me to sit in an office in Munich. But now our operational team and work is in the critical stages of setting up a running company operation and I really need to spend as much time here as possible. To get the clearest picture and to help wherever I can.

This situation will last for at least a few more months as this is the most fragile time when establishing a company operation in a new market and country, so I spend more time at once in Munich and travel to Slovenia only about once or twice per month for a few days (mostly weekends with a few working days for meetings). What quickly became obvious was, that driving home by car every few days is an expensive and tiresome option, as a four to five hours drive (my record was 9 hours due to three accidents on the highway) really leaves a mark on how you feel. So I started considering other options and the fastest one is taking the bus. There are good connections between Ljubljana and Munich, several bus lines connect both cities every day and also the bus is the most affordable option, as you can get a ticket for as low as 20€ one-way. So a bus ride being the most obvious option, I finally tried it out. People who visited or travelled often either used Arriva or Flixbus. There is no big difference between the two, but I decided for Arriva due to tales of free coffee, WiFi, toilet, only one stop on the way and that busses are double-decker buses. So there I was, a new passenger on the regular connection between Munich and Ljubljana. I decided to travel on Thursday from Munich, since with winter weather, snow storms in Austria and weekends coming closer and closer to holiday season, Fridays tend to be hectic on the roads. I expected it all, and empty bus, where I could sleep on the top level of the bus, unbothered  and where coffee would be freshly ground maybe even with an artistic programme or a live music performance. My dreams shattered immediately. The bus had no two floors and there was a bunch of people waiting to get on. What I did not know is that you have two options – either buy a ticket beforehand, or just risk it and wait for the bus and check if there are seats free. To my disappointment the bus was full. But still, I found a free seat, which would be adjusted that there was more space between my neighbour and I and that I could really find a good position where my knees would not hit the seat in front of me (which supposedly happens on Flixbux).

When the bus was full, looking at my fellow passengers I felt like I was in the movie Ko to tamo peva (Who’s Singin’ Over There?), a classical Balkan movie, which is known throughout all the countries  of the former Yugoslavia. It is a movie that shows the political and social situation at the time (the movie takes place 1 day before the occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941). So there were people from many of the Ex-Yugoslavia countries on the bus, some older people, a guy who look like a shepherd by the clothes he was wearing and the stick he was carrying. It made me smile. What stopped me from smiling though was a lady sitting behind me, who in the polite manner noticed a free seat and asked the gentleman next to that seat if it is free. She sat down. And started talking. And if you ever had experience with people from the Balkans, we tend to be quite talkative, some more than others. And that lady… she had a lot to say. I listened for five hours (the entire ride) of empty stories about what somebody said to someone or how someone mentioned a German word and she did not understand it, or whatever. From neighbour disputes, from stories at work, legal proceedings, how good her work is, etc., etc. The gentleman next to her managed to squeeze out a word or two every five minutes, encouraging her to continue. What surprised me was, that her vocal cords were actually able to endure the entire ride, as my ears were almost bleeding just from trying to block out the ramblings. But other than that, the bus ride was great. I managed to make decisions on trading positions (which made me a substantial amount of money by Friday) and arrive to Ljubljana quite rested. I even joyfully let the taxi driver of an unmarked taxi scam me for a few € for the ride home, even though I asked him if he is going to charge the normal tariff (about 1€/km in Ljubljana) – he said – you won´t get a better tariff than that. Which I did, I got the Munich tariff, at about 3€/km 🙂 I didn´t mind as we had a funny talk during the ride, he told me a few stories on the brothels he visits and drives his tourist customers to and how we switches the taxi meter on and off every few kilometres so that his wife or boss would not suspect he went to Nova Gorica on the border with Italy to a brothel to spend some time there with friends.

What I forgot to mention was, that the bus does make one stop in Austria, next to an Outlet shopping centre, so if you are a spontaneous consumer, you get to spend some money in the 15 minutes you stop for. I do plan to stop there the next time I am with car, as they do have some interesting deals, though.

But I was happy. I was not as beat up as I usually am after driving (and I tend to not stop on the way), the snow storms in Austria did not affect me and my brain was relaxed and happy.

So, I spent four days in Slovenia, took care of stuff on Friday, had tires changed on my private car, met friends, took care of mail, bills, enjoyed our traditional high school reunion, which was awesome as always, slept through Saturday, enjoyed a Sunday meal with my parents, coffee with friends, played basketball in the evening and on Monday went the the Ljubljana office, said my goodbyes until next time and ran to the bus again.

This time it was different. It was a Monday bus, so the driver mentioned when I chatted him up, that we can expect some traffic at the tunnel and potentially some delays. That did happen, as well as the weather was really crappy and upon arrival in Munich some tunnels were closed, so we built up one hour of delay. I barely caught the last train I had to home and dropped dead in bed. I did manage to get two seats for myself, the bus had no one really talking, except I suspect that the guy sitting behind me drank about 10 beers, as he always had a can of beer in his hand and  was burping all the time. But what can you do, at least he was not talking for five hours 🙂 I managed to read a book for most of the time and it felt great.

I managed to take a sneak peak at what youngsters do on their smartphones for 6 hours, I was negatively surprised at how boring it was and I think I could have even slept on the ride if the book would not interest me so much.

So taking a bus – yes or no? Definitely yes if you are sick tired of driving as I am. I do want to try out the train in the near future, it does take one hour more, so 6 hours to get to Ljubljana and is more expensive, but I guess it is independent of the traffic conditions. I was also surprised that we were checked for documents twice – on Slovenian-Austrian border and on Austrian-German border, so I guess border controls are back (I only got checked once when travelling by car) even though that on the German side of the border police has checkpoints everywhere.

But to make my point – taking a bus to and from a Balkan country – without a doubt. You will always have an experience as people tend to be more interesting than the classing western-European polite people who keep to themselves. You might get caught up to an interesting conversation, get drunk or just have the opportunity to enjoy your book or browse social media in peace, you will never know, until you get on that bus.