flixbus London-Brussels; Brussels-Bern

In the early morning, the bus departed from Victoria Station to Brussels. It's insane that you can cover the distance to Greenwich in just over 30 minutes underground, but it takes over 2 hours by bus for the same route. However, being in Greenwich doesn't mean you're outside the city yet, although the traffic from there on flowed a bit more smoothly.

Of course, there were passport checks again when loading onto the train through the Eurotunnel, and after 8 hours, the first leg was completed (actually 7 hours thanks to the time difference ;-)).

There was a 4-hour wait until the departure to Bern from Brussels, and since I didn't want to wander too far with my luggage, I sat down on a park bench on Boulevard Roi Albert and enjoyed the nice weather a bit, because the weather forecast for my arrival in Bern in the early morning didn't look particularly good... :-(

Interestingly, the Flixbuses stop at Gare Du Nord, right next to the hotel where I stayed during my last visit to Brussels.

After another 10 hours of driving, the rest of the journey was completed as well. At the Carterminal Neufeld, there was a police check before we were allowed to get off, but at least the weather held up better than announced yesterday.

So, within one day, I was in Great Britain, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, France again, and finally Switzerland.

The Flixbus from Brussels was an extremely pleasant surprise.

A short comparison:

- The trip from Bern to Paris (Flixbus France) was done in a pretty old, battered bus with broken and uncomfortable seats.

- The trip from Paris to London (Flixbus France) took place in a modern and comfortable bus with moderate legroom.

- The bus from London to Brussels (Flixbus Netherlands) was comparable to the one to London.

- The bus from Brussels to Bern (Flixbus Italy) was extremely modern and offered double seat spacing and therefore a lot of legroom. This is also much more practical for a night journey because otherwise you can't really tilt the seat far back. Actually, it was also the first Flixbus that actually lived up to the promises in the advertisement :-)