Read about Day 3 here. 

We started off our 4^th day in Europe pretty early, as it was a full travel day out of Paris to the tiny town of Interlaken in Switzerland. There weren’t any real mad rushes in our room (again, we roomed with the coolest girls from South Africa) but being the Filipinos that we are, A and I decided to get up early so we could both take showers before we left.

According to the schedule that Lana gave us, we were supposed to have boarded the bus by 9 in the morning. Breakfast was pretty much the same thing and after checking out, A and I boarded the bus that would take us to the second country in our Eurotrip. Luckily we were grouped with a pretty punctual group and no one was really late.

Travelling through the European countries by land is very different from how one would do it in the Philippines. For starters, there’s a mandatory break that all buses should take every two and a half hours, which meant that we got to go out and stretch our legs at the petrol stations as well as get coffees and snacks. A and I made this deal that we’d alternate getting the window seat at each stop, just so we’d get to soak in the views equally. The Top Deck coach we got was pretty nice; Matt the driver pretty much kept things spick and span and we got USB outlets so we could charge our various gadgets. There was also free wifi but because I got my data SIM, I didn’t really make use of it.

Lana took the down time in the bus to get us all more acquainted with each other; everybody went up to the front to introduce themselves and tell a little bit about what they do back in their home countries. Of course, being the millennials that we were, a Facebook group was quickly created so it’d be easier to contact everybody in case anything happens. Lana also introduced us to this Topdeck tradition of having an official tour group logo of some sort; luckily we had an awesome graphics designer in our team, M, who was able to come up with this incredibly cool design in a few hours. I ordered a hoodie from Topdeck that was ridiculously expensive at 30Euros but since it had M’s design on it, I figured that it’d be a good keepsake of my first Eurotrip.

Lana also passed around the schedule for the next couple of days as well as the rooming sheet. We were staying at Balmer’s Herbage and this time there were six people in a room. We ended up rooming with a couple of guys from Austrlalia and New Zealand, with graphics designer M from London and M from the USA.

There was a funny moment during our first pit stop. Matt and Lana were pretty clear that we only had 15 minutes to do our business at the petrol station and they were telling all sorts of stories about how they’ve left people behind before. Well, as these things go, a few people in our group turned up late and as a scare tactic/hard lesson, Matt drove the bus to the other side of the petrol station. They were really panicked but that served a pretty good lesson for everybody because no one was late after that.

Anyways, here are my initial thoughts of Paris: it was more like Manila than I would have thought. Aside from the expected French attitude (people would really not talk to you unless you unless you try to speak to them in French), I mean. It’s all very pretty and bathed in all of these historical moments but at the same time it’s also very disorganized and chaotic and there were a lot, lot, lot of graffiti. There was also that moment that we got scammed that took a little bit of the charm out of Paris for me.

As far as expenses go, at the time I had already spent 170Euros so far. Seems like a lot but since I had originally budgeted spending 50Euros per day, I had only been 20Euros over budget at that point. I was pretty confident that I could easily recover that loss as we weren’t expected to spend anything during the bus days and on this particular one, all meals were covered by the tour. In retrospect, 50Euros was still a lot since the hostels, breakfasts and transfers in between countries were already included in the Topdeck Europe Express price but I decided early on that while I wouldn’t go too crazy with the spending, I also wouldn’t be too stingy on myself.

We stopped at petrol stations twice times that day, I think; one lunch and one for an afternoon pee break. The caterers in Paris made everybody packed lunches of pasta salads and chips and juice so I just had a coffee from the vending machine at the petrol station. We eventually arrived at Interlaken at around quarter to 5 in the afternoon and after getting us all checked in, we were treated to a Swiss dinner in the restaurant next door.

We had fondue!!!

And I didn’t get to do much of anything after dinner since it was pretty cold outside and Interlaken seemed like a quiet town. We just settled into our rooms that evening and got ready for the following day where we had the whole day to explore the town.

Stay tuned for Day 5.