Yes. I went on Busabout. Pretty cool. I like the system they use. Just remember you don’t have to go to all of the places they go to. That’s the great part. Normally with Tours they ship you around the place and make you do things. Busabout allows for you to be in control. The Bus goes past a city every 3 days. So if you want to go from Berlin or where ever to Poland, then just go. Go as long as you want. Then you can go back to the city you went from and continue on the Busabout loop. There are 2 types of tickets. The unlimited bus trips – where you can hop on and off the bus as much as you like in a certain time frame. Or the Limited ticket – Where you buy individual bus trips, but there is no time frame with this one (if you go to Poland and decide to stay there longer then you can. Your ticket will still be valid, when you get back into the Busabout Loop.) I did the Limited bus ticket. I bought 8 journeys and I was able to get from London to Rome stopping at Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Munich (my favouirte city), Venice and Rome.

If you have anymore questions about it just ask me.

Just curious SCHMATT, why was Munich your favourite city?

I don’t know. It had a nice pleasent vibe about it. Everyone seemed happy in the street. Maybe it had something to do with living in London around grumpy people for a long time. And I like the beer gardens. Everyone probably says that but I like the concept behind them. You go there and there are hundreds of German families there with their kids just enjoying life.

You go to the gardens and everyone is happy playing football or playing with their dogs. If I could live there I would.

I’m part German myself so that’s probably a link there, being with my own kind. I have a savoury taste bud not a sweet one. That’s from my German side definatly. When you walk through the beer gardens and they have massive sausages and Schnitzels and stuff. It’s cool to see where your genes come from.

There are other busses and trains which I would recommend if you want to go off the tourist route.

Eurolines goes just about everywhere, and if that isn’t enough, a little research into bussing will give you everything you need.

What are the benefits to the busabout instead of the rail? Do ya’ll think it is a better option?

Thanks

No I don’t. Your options of places to go are much more limited. If you only want to see the major cities then it is probably good. If you are going out of the way, there probably isn’t very much service. Trains go almost everywhere in Europe and where they don’t they have their own bus networks.

Keep in mind that Busabout is aimed at foreign (non-European) tourists. I’m European (Belgian) and have travelled around Europe extensively, and I’ve only heard about that company on this forum. So if you want to meet the locals (and why else would you travel?), travel by train or by Eurolines bus. I would recommend taking Eurolines busses or budget flights for long international journeys, and local trains and busses for shorter trips. Eurolines has services to Poland from all over Europe. Train tickets from Berlin (or elsewhere in eastern Germany) to Poland aren’t very expensive either. Within Poland, take whatever’s most convenient, train or bus (though busses are a lot cheaper). Where are you going in Poland btw?

ive never used busabout but from what i hear the biggest negative is that it takes longer than if you just use train. anyhow if you look at eurail passes vs busabout the prices arent much different. i would go with eurail, better deal.

Buses generally do go longer than trains, just the speed limits are more strict, I suppose.

I get the feeling from your name, that you might be on your honeymoon, if that is the case, the last thing you want is a been stuck on a bus with loads of other travellers (no offence) but with a train you can move from carriage to carriage.
Also if you miss your train, there ususually another one not too far away, whereas the Busabout you have to wait 2 days

True. I only had 2 weeks to travel and get a sense of the cities and then move on. The places where they go to are concidered the most popular travel destinations in Europe. The good thing about is that you can plan your own trip. If I was there Longer I would have used Busabout as a beacon. Say you go to Berlin you can go traveling to other cities by yourself and then when you’ve finished you could return to berlin to continue the trip.

While yes your stuck on a bus with other travellers, but what’s wronge with that. Your a traveller as well. And it’s great to see familiar people along the trip. There might be people on the bus who have gone to that city before and can show the best places to see. It’s a valid source of information. If you go by public trains and buses you might be lucky to bump into someone who knows where to stay and what to see.

I’m only saying from my own experience that it suited me. For other people they might have different ideas of what they want on a trip. All I know is that I had a bed to sleep in every night, I only had to move my heavy bags from the bus to the hostel and I made some good friends along the way. If I had been travelling on my own on trains and other buses I would probably had been lonely, sleeping in crappy hostels and wondering around strange cities with 3 heavy bags.

Like everyone says on here I’m just giving my opinion about something that I know about because I did it and I enjoyed it. They can travel around any way they like.

One of my problems with these sort of deals is it takes some of the randomness and the unexpected out of the trip. Sometimes wandering around with your bags, getting lost or on the wrong train ends up being a really unforgettable time. Sometimes for good reasons!

Thanks for all the feedback everyone…for those that asked:

Yes, we are on our honeymoon and I agree that the bus would take most of the unexpectedness and adventure out of the trip, which is what we are going for.

Also, I forgot the name of the person who asked, but we are going to Krakow in Poland. My fiance is Polish and a big WWII buff, so we are going to take a day trip to Aushwitz. Also, I am a nanny right now while getting my BA and my boss/friend, went on Fulbright to Poland during her Ph.D. program, so she knows lots of neat places to visit and people to hook us up with along the way. We plan to spend a good amount of our trip in Poland I think since we are both so interested in the country.

Thanks again!
Ashley

I’m sure you’ll love Poland. Krakow is very pretty, certainly a good place for a honeymoon, and I haven’t met anyone who didn’t like it. But what I really like about Poland is the countryside, so if you’ve got time to fit in some smaller towns, do.[url=‘http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/seraphimkarlien/album?.dir=9e46&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/seraphimkarlien/my_photos’]Here’s some pics.[/url]

what small cities in poland would you recommend seraphim?

I really love Lower Silesia, that’s the area in the southwest, around Wroclaw (which is certainly worth a visit too). There’s loads of cool villages and small towns there, as well as beautiful nature and things like ruined castles, palaces etc. Jelenia Gora is beautiful, as are other towns nearby, e.g. Swidnica, Bolkow and to a lesser extent Lwowek Slaski. I also loved Paczkow (which has a mostly preserved medeaval town, including the city walls), Otmuchow (really small, but it has a beautiful old town hall, church, castle and is inbetween 2 lakes) and Nysa (which used to be known as the "Silesian Rome" because of the many religious buildings, but it was badly bombed during the war so only some of those are left). There’s some old spa towns as well, I went to Kudowa Zdroj, and the Karkonosze on the Czech border are great for moderate hiking (if you want to go there, I know a wondeful and cheap pension in Szklarska Poreba). In the spring of 2003 I stayed in the village of Wlen, near Jelenia Gora, with a Belgian guy who bought an old castle there that he’s restoring, and who rents out some rooms for guests at a very reasonable price. And as I was the only guest at that time, he also drove me around the area most days. I could give you his e-mail adress if that sounds interesting to you.

Another recommended place is Torun. It has a beautiful medeaval old town. I was really surprised by how few tourists were there when I visited last september.

I’m sure there’s loads of cool places I haven’t been to yet though. Ejmarkow seems to know billions of ‘em.

You can read[url=‘http://blogs.bootsnall.com/karlien/archives/cat_poland.shtml’]the Poland section of my travel blog[/url] if you want to know more about some of these places.