I cannot stand long bus rides, espcially after our Ouibus from returning from London was delayed. Alas, I took another long bus ride from Metz to Paris a cold Saturday morning to meet up with a friend for the day. While taking the TGV high speed rail would have been preferable, my rail pass had just run out and train tickets from Metz to Paris ran nearly 100 Euros, totaling 200 for a round trip. So I opted to take the much cheaper (and much less comfortable) Flixbus.

Let me preface this by saying I was exhausted just coming off our “Christmas Market Marathon.”. The bus was set to depart at 2:40 am, so I did not get much rest that night; I was planning to sleep on the 4/5 hour bus ride. (The train, on the other hand, is a quick 90 minutes one way).

The Flixbus runs between Frankfurt and Paris, stopping at Metz inbetween. As such, the bus was already pretty full by the time it got to Metz. Myself and a handful of others boarded the bus; I don’t think there were empty seats after we boarded. After waiting a few minutes, we were off.

On the bus, I was seated in the second to last row of the bus, on the left side. In the row in front of me to the right was a French businessman, and directly behind me was a pair of Russian men. From when we departed, the two gentlemen behind me were being very loud; one was constantly on the phone, and both of them chatted with each other, inconsiderate of those trying to sleep on the night bus (me). The French guy in front of me was very upset, as he too was trying to rest, and confronted them a few times. “PROCHAIN ARRET!” he yelled, “NEXT STOP!” (He only spoke a few words of English). It was pretty clear he was asking to fight them at the next stop, because he had had it with their antics. Each time the 2nd Flixbus driver (the one not currently driving), just told the Frenchman and the Russian men to sit down and be quiet, and nothing too serious subsided.

I tried to block out the noise and put on my headphones, and just ignored all the commotion. The same could not be said about the Frenchman in front of me. The gentlemen behind me got more obnoxious and loud as time went on, yelling at random times for no apparent reason, and the Frenchman finally blew up. Of course he yelled “PROCHAIN ARRET” at them again, looking for a fight. Pardon my French, but the kicker was when he told off loud gentlemen, “FUCK YOUR FAMILY, FUCK YOUR MOTHER.”

That phrase set off the Russian gentlemen and a fight broke out. The Frenchman whipped off his jacket, and the three men began to throw punches at each other. It was unfortunate that I was sitting inbetween them, right in the line of their punches. I was pretty upset about how the situation unfolded, as I was jostled quite a bit as collateral damage of their brawl. Nonetheless, I was too tired to care at that point and just wanted to sleep. I slowly curled up into a ball in my seat and prayed this nightmare would be over soon.

I did not get any sleep on the bus.

After being forcefully seperated by the driver, they swapped seats with some other passengers to seperate them. The Frenchman was still fuming as his shirt was ripped during the fight. At the next rest stop, while the bus was filling up for gas, the cops were called, and I believe the loud gentlemen were escorted off the bus. The rest of the journey was quiet.

The bus back from Paris to Metz was much more peaceful. Thankfully nothing eventlful happened on the bus ride back. I passed out rather quickly on the bus so the 5 hour ride went by fast. Interestingly enough, the same drivers operated the bus back, which meant that from that morning, they proceeded to drive the Flixbus to Frankfurt and back while I was in Paris during the day. Not too long after they arrived back to Paris that night, they operated the bus back to Metz and Frankfurt a little after 10:00 pm. The drivers must have been on at least a 24 hour shift; it makes you wonder when they get a break.

It’s just my luck a fight would break out on the bus I was taking. For the future, I’m going avoid buses and stick to traveling by train and planes.