A YouTube travel vlog by Nate and Kara Buchanan documenting an overnight Lux Express bus trip from Krakow to Bratislava. They describe packing and luggage choices, waiting in coffee shops, confusion at the bus station (locked in/out, language barriers), separation on boarding, the bus ride (seat comfort, TVs), arrival in Bratislava around 5:30am, checking into a hostel, rest, and plans to join a Bratislava food tour at 1pm. The video includes brief commentary on sleep (about 2 hours for Nate), medication (600 mg ibuprofen), and comparisons to Asian overnight bus experiences.
Chapters
It's gonna be a long walk.
Tomaz is coming to get it.
It was either pay $3 or drag our bags 30 minutes across the city. Getting better at making good decisions. Otherwise we would end up at the coffee shop in a fight. Sweaty.
People think we're crazy.
We had to check out of our Airbnb. So we're taking all of our luggage to the Karma coffee shop we went to the other day with Charlie. And we're gonna work until our bus leaves at 11. Florida.
It's gonna be a long night. We get to Bratislava at 5:30 in the morning. They say we're gonna need a nap tomorrow.
I walk a thousand.
Miles.
Just to see you smile.
We've been kicked out. She actually told us we could stay.
The coffee shop that we planned on hanging out at until our bus left at 11:30, closed at 7.
But look at the sunset.
Standing on the street, trying to figure out where to go next with all of our luggage.
Conveniently, there's another coffee shop right across the road that's open till 10 and a side by.
Thank you. We stayed in that coffee shop for about three hours, had some dinner. It is now 10:30. It was closing, so we had to leave. And we are walking to the bus station.
Our bus doesn't leave till like after 11:30, so we'll still have to sit there for like an hour.
I'll be interested to see how the European buses compare to the Asian overnight buses.
Oh, gosh.
In our Asian bus experiences, they would pull over on the side of the road and pee whenever they wanted to. Or if they needed a cigarette break, they would just pull over on the side of the road and do that too. Wouldn't tell anybody what we were doing.
Drop us off at night in random.
Places and not tell us why we were kicked off a bus in the middle of the night and told to wait there.
That was in Thailand for like an.
Hour until the next bus picked us up.
But we didn't know the next bus was coming because we couldn't speak Thai.
Hopefully this will be a better experience. It could be our last overnight bus in Europe. Or maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised. Yeah, that's what I'm hoping for.
Yeah.
We made it to the bus station.
But apparently none of the buses. They brought us lava.
I went into the bus station, walked around, tried to figure out what was going on, ended up getting locked in the bus station.
I was so fun.
Kara was locked outside of the bus station, so we were separated. None of the signs read Bratislava. Our train leaves in 30 minutes. So we got 30 minutes to figure it out. I did ask the ladies. She said we were at the right place. I just have to figure out which bus to get on.
Can I make sure today is the night?
It is.
It's not helping that our ticket receipt is in Polish. We think this means we're in the right place. We don't know what number 52 means.
We know that's where we're going.
That's about all we know.
After she speaks English and she said no, she went like this. So I think it's not here yet. But then she said Looks Express. So I'm hoping it's just not here yet because I don't see a Looks Express. That's.
Hope they let us on with an electronic ticket. Who has time to print out 2K? Yes, Karen and Nathan.
It's a nice bus. We're currently separated. Karen's back there. Hopefully somebody will switch.
Check out these TVs. It's like nicer than an airplane. Movies on the bus.
Who knew I was gonna sit beside Kara. But that seat won't lean back and I'm not doing that for six hours.
What do you think of the bus?
The really nice girl next to Nate.
Almost midnight. We are on the road. I have high hopes for the Luxe Express.
Yeah, we haven't talked about this yet. Did you sleep?
I think I slept in like 2 minute increments.
I saw you sleep for at least 30 minutes in the same position.
Oh, good.
I think I went to sleep at like 2:30 and I gave up on sleep at 5 and say max. I got two hours of sleep.
I watched it. Way too intense to move.
It is now almost 6am we are at the bus stop somewhere in Bratislava. We have to figure out how to get to our hostel. The plan is take our stuff to our hostel, drop it off, go find some coffee. Hopefully we'll have enough energy to go explore.
We are rocking.
Hey, there it is.
We just got to our hostel. It feels like it's in the middle of town. I'm not sure. It's super nice and we couldn't check into our room yet. We were pretty sure that was the case. But we get to sit in this huge common room with a real coffee pot.
We have emerged from the hostel. I had two massive cups of coffee and I'm feeling super wired up now. I need some food.
Not feeling quite as wired. About two hours of sleep plus a pretty bad head cold.
It's getting to me.
Hoping breakfast is gonna make me Feel better. Sorry, trams are so loud. We still have like three hours before we can check into our rooms. So we're going to grab some breakfast, maybe go see the castle, maybe go see a church that's blue. I don't know. We only have two days here, so we have to make the most of.
Our time making ourselves get out there.
We just had a really yummy grocery store breakfast and so far, Bratislava is a really cute town. We haven't seen that much of it yet. We had a ton of plans for today to squeeze in before we left and we're canceling them all.
So we really enjoyed our food tour yesterday. So last night I reached out to Bratislava Food Tours because we thought it'd be fun to do a food tour while we were here because it's a great way to see the city, understand the history of a town, and enjoy some really good food. And they just got back to me and they said today is the only day they could squeeze us in. The food tour starts at 1pm, so we're going back to sleep for a couple hours. So we're not just like complete zombies on the food tour.
We would hate for our vlog of the food tour to start with us being zombies zombies and complaining about our overnight bus.
So we're cutting this one off here and the next vlog will start with the food tour in like three or four hours. Yay.
Top bill right now.
Still kind of hot.
I just took a 600 milligram ibuprofen. That should lower the fever if I have one.
