A few weeks ago, two of my friends attempted to go to Prague. I say attempted because they never got to Prague. They booked an overnight bus from St Gallen to Prague, with a return on the overnight bus the following night through the company Eurolines. The bus is supposed to depart from St Gallen at 11pm. My friends waited until midnight before giving up on it. They emailed the company the following day saying the bus never showed up. Apparently it did show up--at 12:30am. They were able to get a refund though, and since they hadn't booked a hostel, they weren't out anything other than the experience.
More recently, Giovanna, Sim, and I decided we wanted to go to Prague the first weekend in May. We looked into a variety of companies that have overnight buses, since that was our cheapest option. Unfortunately, the only company with available seats on their buses on dates that worked for us was Eurolines. So we booked the tickets, booked our hostel, packed, and met up at 10:45pm, ready to catch our bus to Prague.
And we waited. And waited. And waited. We knew from our friends' experience that the bus was probably late. It finally showed up at approximately 12:15am. We were so excited that, after waiting an hour and a half, the bus had finally come. The driver gets out, we pull out our tickets, and the driver gives us the bad news: there are no seats on the bus. Seriously?! We ask him how this could happen when we booked tickets for that bus. He got on the phone with his boss, said something to her, and handed the phone over to Giovanna, who quickly passed it off to me. The woman on the phone just kept repeating that she was sorry the bus was full, but if we called in the morning they could book us on another bus to Prague. I told her that was not an option for us, as we had a hostel booked for the following night. Due to the quickly approaching end of the semester, there are simply no other dates when we can go to Prague either. Unfortunately, she did not speak enough English for us to truly have a conversation, and apparently nobody else in the office spoke English (I asked). Since Eurolines screwed up our trip, I informed her that not only would they be refunding us the price of our bus tickets, but they would also be refunding us the price of the hostel in Prague. I eventually got off the phone with her, and the bus continued on without us.
That night, we emailed Eurolines to demand our refund. Fortunately, they will be refunding us everything; the bus tickets and the hostel. Apparently there were passengers on the bus who did not have a ticket. Which is what I simply do not understand. There is one door to get on and off the bus, and everyone has to go past the driver, who should be checking tickets. So there is no possible way that anyone should be on the bus if they do not have a ticket. It is a very simple concept.
So I am writing this from St Gallen and not Prague, unfortunately. I have some additional time now to study for my upcoming finals, work on a paper, and go to the gym, but it was still extremely disappointing unpacking my backpack this morning in Switzerland and not in Prague.
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