Flixbus to Slovenia & Ouigo Train to Paris – Storytime

Ever wonder what slow travel really looks like when you’re trying to avoid planes? In this solo episode of Travel Devil, host Clara Francken gets personal about the highs and lows of her sustainable travel choices.

From the Eurostar train to Paris to smelly Flixbus rides across Europe, Clara shares the truth behind trying to lower her carbon footprint.

This week’s chat isn’t about perfect eco-friendly travel, it’s about real, sometimes messy choices:

• The truth of still taking the plane sometimes
• How taking the train beats flying, even when it’s longer
• A hilariously awful Flixbus ride featuring broken toilets and mafia job offers
• The real reason bus travel can be cheaper, but not always easier
• Why trains like Ouigo and Eurostar between France and Belgium are worth knowing

Clara also reflects on how her travel habits have changed over the years, from automatically booking cheap flights to prioritizing trains and buses, even if it means more adventure (and chaos) along the way.

Stories:

• Flixbus from Germany to Slovenia (Munich to Ljubljana)
• Flixbus from Germany to Croatia (Munich to Zadar via Zagreb)
• Ouigo from Belgium to France (Brussels to Paris)

If you’re curious about sustainable travel, slow mobility, or just want an honest look behind the scenes of a travel podcast, this episode is for you.

sustainable travel • slow travel • train vs plane • bus travel Europe • Flixbus stories • eco-friendly travel • travel diary podcast • Travel Devil podcast • Clara Francken • low carbon travel • cheap European trains • travel podcast • overland travel • ethical travel choices • travel sustainability

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:18 My recent travel (Germany, Paris, US, Slovenia, Croatia)
• 6:04 Flixbus Horror Story to Slovenia
• 14:00 Amtrak & US train travel
• 15:33 Upcoming podcast collab
• 17:39 Ouigo vs Eurostar: cheap train to Paris
• 21:18 Next week's guest reveal & outro

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to travel travel amigos Clara Franken Eine neue World of Last Reisen. Wir werden konventionell Travel less Jetzt. All righty. Welcome to Travel Devil. Today I am alone. I'm your host, Clara Francken. And yeah, today I just want to read a little bit and tell you a bit more about what's going on behind the scenes, because I think maybe it is interesting for you. Because, you know, I'm making this podcast, and in the beginning I did a couple of solo episodes, and then I just kind of stopped and I published most of my interviews, but then I wouldn't post every week. I'm not too good at it. But now my new idea is to post every week. And if I didn't manage to have an interview edited, I can just come on here, give you some updates about what's going on, what some learnings that I recently have, especially related to trains, because I think I know a lot about slow travelling by train, so I can share a lot of that experience. Tell you a bit more about what my life has been, So yeah, let's get into this, to start off, I wanted to say that I feel like I need to be home more, and I feel like I've been travelling a lot lately. If I go back. I think I started travelling a lot in April because in April I am in Germany, right? So at the end of April, there's the feelings fest in Germany and mentioned, which is kind of like Oktoberfest, which, you know, like the beer festival, and they have the similar, similar party, let's say, but in more summer time. So it's in April. So it's like right before summer. So it's spring, right? And so there's a big flea market over there where you can buy all kind of stuff. So I've been over there, the weekend after I went to Paris, went to Paris with my mom, and I had a lot of that, a lot of fun over there. I took the train to Paris, which was a high speed train, which was pretty nice and super easy to get to Paris from Germany. So I was very happy. And then I was there for a weekend with my mom, and then I left for the very first time in my life to the US. I was in L.A., I was in New York, and I took the Amtrak. I didn't take the Amtrak as much as I could have, but I kind of focussed this holidays also on seeing my friends and not only on travelling by train so much. Yeah. And then I came back to Germany after that. like two weeks later. I was in Slovenia. I got there again by public transports, and then I was in Germany again. Then I was in Belgium, and I'm in Germany again. And like literally this weekend I'm going away again within Germany, but still on the roads. So I feel like I need a break. But let me share a bit of a backstory because I feel like I'm travelling a lot by sustainable means of transport. I'm not the best. So I mean, of course I didn't swim to the U.S so a couple of things for a couple of days. I still do take the plane and I want to be transparent on that. I'm trying to be a sustainable as possible, so most of my trips are by bus or by train basically. And yeah, I want to share a bit of those stories today, but I also want to share that I have a past where I did travel a lot by plane, and maybe it's interesting to see the difference between what I used to do and what I now do. And obviously there's more options now, but I think it's also about being open minded about these other options. So basically the first time I went to Germany from Belgium, I took a car to come because I was moving for my Erasmus, which is an exchange. And then when I came back from Germany to see my family over the holidays, I told the easiest thing would be to take the Ryanair plane because it was obviously super cheap and the only option I would have thought of, and I didn't really think about the trains back then. This was eight years ago. So yeah, I do. I took to blame my grandparents, picked me up at the airport, was fun, and then I realised after that that actually I could have just taken a train and I was kind of like, I was kind of disgusted by my own choice. Not in a like a very bad way, but I was getting into the sustainability aspect of things, and I was reflecting on me taking the plane for such a small distance. And I was like, okay, this is actually weird. So I looked into this and then I realised that if I buy my tickets ahead of time, I it's not only like better for the environment, it's actually even cheaper. I can use my time on the road with better because compared to a plane, I didn't have to wait to get in the plane, then take the plane, then wait to get like, I don't know, wait for my luggage and stuff and then only be one hour in the year, but be like six hours on the road because you need to get to the airport, or even longer. Maybe you need to get to the airport. You need to get from the airport back. So you like gone a whole day. To be honest. And by train as well. But you can use all of this time basically. Okay, this was a little introduction, but, for this last trip where I went to Slovenia, I went by public transport and I don't say train because I wasn't going by train. I used to go to Slovenia by plane. Then it was from Belgium because Belgium is a bit further away. When I had a long distance relationship with my boyfriend, I'm talking a bit all over the place. But basically, after my mom's in Germany where I met my boyfriend, he did Erasmus in Slovenia. I went up to visit him, and basically the easiest thing to do was to do the plane between Belgium and Slovenia. But then I moved to Germany with him. And from here it's actually pretty easy to take the train to Slovenia, which is so fun. So I used to take the train a couple of times because obviously without obviously. But we do go back Slovenia a couple of times. Anyway, I try to go there by train now, but because of works on the tracks, which is probably a good thing, they're improving the tracks and improving the trains. At the moment, it's kind of almost impossible to get to Ljubljana by train, so I had to take the bus. And that brings me to Flixbus, which is my very first episode. My well, on my on my on my on my podcast. Wow. Yeah. So Flixbus and I are not the best friends. I remembered why when I was on the bus, because, you know, the bus that I was taking was basically connecting the south of Germany with Slovenia, going all the way to Zagreb, which is in Croatia. So what we did, we took the train to Munich and then from Munich which is the south of Germany, we took the Flixbus and this Flixbus was everything you're afraid of when you're entering a flixbus, meaning The toilet is broken, it's smelly, the seats are not clean, the neighbours are noisy. My neighbours are also had a lot of fun drinking and talking loud. Very loud. Baby were screaming the people. The driver was not helpful. He actually didn't even speak any of the languages I speak and I speak five so I certainly I don't speak Croatian or Slovenian, so I don't have any language close to that one. So I couldn't communicate only with the the drivers help basically. But he kind of told us to fuck off basically. So we had to clean our own seats at our first stop, we clean like it's not really the seat. It was more like the little table in front of the seats, which was super dirty. We were sitting next to a neighbour who was really like, he was really talking a lot about his. I don't know, his businesses he had. So he had like great businesses. But he also has had a lot of friends who were in prison. And then, I don't know, he had his girlfriends, was having drinking problems or I don't I don't know, it was really weird, weird conversation going on, just like my neighbour and his neighbour, basically because we are sitting on one side of the island, they are sitting on the other side of the aisle. And then this guy was really intrigued and he was like, oh wow, yeah, yeah, yeah, telling all of these stories. And then this one guy who was sharing all these stories is like, yeah, are you looking for a job? Because I can offer you a job. I mean, people don't get paid well enough in the Balkan region. I can pay you better. I will make sure you are well-paid and blah, blah, blah. And, like, this guy actually really gave a visit to cards to the dudes and a dude was like, super excited of maybe this new opportunity. And I was listening to this not not so judging. I was kind of like listening as it was entertaining. And as we went out, my boyfriend explained. And he was like, yeah, probably. I mean, we're not sure, but probably some kind of mafia scam thingy. So basically, yeah, all of we, all the things he was talking about was like black market money or like they were doing things like under the radar, which was obviously making money, but also making sure that's that's probably why all of his friends are in prison on his. And they have like drinking issues and stuff. So it was entertaining to be on the bus again. Always entertaining, but not always the best. Are you always happy when you're not alone on the bus or you have, like, some side person like you like you're not sitting next to the weird people. But yeah, there was a flixbus. I know we went to. And then we took another flixbus to get to Zadar, which is at the seaside, and there's no, or there was at the time, at least for that day. No bus that went straight from Slovenia, Ljubljana to Zadar. So we had to do like a kind of, a road which went in the wrong direction to then be in the right country and then go back towards the seaside, which meant that we took the bus that went from Ljubljana to Zagreb, and then from Zagreb to Zadar Those buses were very clean. We only had one issue. That actually in the second, like the last bus, we had actually booked a seats to sit in the front because I wanted to make some videos. And I also just wanted to enjoy the view. So we were sitting in the front and there was a lady who was like, no, I'm sitting here. I was like, yeah, but we paid for the seats. And she was like, no, you can sit wherever you want in the bus. First come, first serve. And we're like, yeah, no, actually, actually you don't. We have reserved seats, you know, like trying to be friendly, but also like, this lady was not moving at all. She was like, she she was like, no, this is my right I'm sitting here, I'm staying here. And so we had to actually tell the bus driver like, hey, we're sorry, but we booked two seats. Can you talk to the lady? Because she won't listen to us. And the bus driver had to kick her to another seats, and she was like, angry. Upset. Like the first hour of the ride. She was like, talking, like, very annoyed. Anyway, besides that, the bus was fun, you know? And, I think what is maybe more fun about it is sometimes people tell me, I will say what I think. Sometimes people tell me like, yeah, you tell all of these bad stories about about travelling by bus as well, like, or by train. But there's a lot of bad stories about travelling by plane as well. And by plane. There's so many issues that can come up like also a plane cancelling. There's no next plane. I've had it, the plane was fully booked and because the, what was it called, this, check in was on too late. The plane was already full, and so we couldn't even get on the plane because they basically overbooked it, because there's always a chance that somebody is not showing up or something. Super weird rule. Yeah. So I mean, those are like major issues, and you cannot even, like, you can never arrive to a destination fast enough. If that happens in a bus, in a train, you will always arrive at your destination, and at the same time you will have some funny, weird stories to tell like I'm doing right now. So I'm not complaining. I'm just explaining, some stories from the roads and hope that they're entertaining. Okay, so basically, I think next time we're going to do a little, little talking, you and me, basically me rambling to my to my computer, who's in front of me. I might want to talk a bit about Amtrak. So if you have any questions about how it was in the US, please DM me, because I'm trying to find a way to have this more like a mutual thing, because at the moment I create all of this and I see that there's people listening. But, I'm not getting so much response. So I want to say there is an Instagram page which is called Travel Devil Bots. You can go ahead and follow it like Demi and let me know what you think of the show or tell me something you want to know. Because I did a whole episode about Amtrak, but I recorded all of that before my own experience. So it was a really, really interesting episode, and I would highly recommend it if you're interested in like the railway industry in the US, it was a great, great episode. I really loved it, but at the same time, I think it's also cool to talk from my own experience. I think this next solo is going to be a bit about that, so if you have questions about that, I would love to answer them. And besides that, you can also just reach out to me on my own Instagram, which is Clara Francken, which is just my name. With “c k”. I'm not even sure on how to pronounce it in English. Clara Francken I don't know. Anyway, yeah, I just want to get into a couple of questions. I did send out a message like literally one hour ago to ask people if they have any questions. So I'm just I received two questions by now. It's a bit to last minutes to get a lot of responses. Obviously, but I'm gonna go ahead and answer them. So basically the first question was do you have any future collabs? So this is a fun one because I didn't even talk about podcast things and it's kind of podcast related. I think this question. So yeah, I do have a lot of upcoming, interviews actually. I think I've got even five episodes that still need to come out. So I got a lot of episodes, stacked my issue is more editing. But yeah, I think the last episode I did was a lot of fun. I interviewed Joe Soles. This episode will only go out, I think somewhere in August. But basically Joe is, a writer and photographer. He written he's written for Lonely Planet's Nat Geo, I think Forbes. So he had also he used to have his own podcast, which kind of made him a good person to talk to on a podcast, because I feel like he was entertaining and we were really vibing. So I think that episode will be a lot of fun. It was also a bit more random episode because we didn't discuss so much what we would talk about beforehand, and then it just came about the the whole topic would be about cruises and the sustainability aspect of cruises and like sustainable options for cruises such as more like a sailing ship instead of a cruise, basically like a cruise with sails, I would say. So yeah, that's fun. That's coming up. I really love speaking to people also. By the way, if we're on the topic of like mutual connection with your you and me, you're listening at home and me talking here. If you have any guests you want to suggest, please let me know. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead to my phone and check for it for the other question. Okay. This other question is very specific. So it's basically asking me if I would choose Ouigo or Eurostar. I think this is because I'm posting a bit of content about the train between France and Belgium. Which is kind of out of the blue for what I all talked about right now. But I'm going to get into this. So basically there's a train between Brussels and Paris, and I took the train last week and I used to go by Eurostar. It's a very fancy, beautiful train. It's super easy, super convenient. You're, like, from Brussels to Paris in one hour, 40 minutes, something like that. So it's super convenient, super easy. People are nice. It's fancy, it's clean, it's everything you need. Both a bit expensive. And now there's basically a new solution for that. I think they started like December 2024. I'm not sure. And basically what they've done is they used trains that were actually meant to go to from Brussels to Paris for the Olympic Games because the Olympics were in Paris. And then that was never really promoted so much. And those tickets were only on sale in Belgium and not for people from Paris. And it was only like available on the Belgian website, which is not so accessible. And so now basically the Belgium NMBS / SNCB, which is our railways company, they collabed or they collided for this train, with OUIGO, which is a part of the French railway company SNCF. I think so, you have OUIGO in France, which is this cheaper railway department of the French company. And then you have the SNCB in Belgium. And basically these are Belgian trains, like old Belgian trains, which are just being used on the tracks. It's very slow. But it's a nice trip if you're only between Belgium and France and you're not in a hurry, it takes you there in three hours and the ticket prices are actually way lower. So the cheapest ticket you can find is for €10. And compared to the Eurostar, I the cheapest price you will find for the Eurostar will be €30, which is definitely okay, but it's still quite expensive. In most cases, because the prices can go really up and the OUIGO stays kind of on a low basis. I think the Eurostar could go up to like 150 or more, and the Ouigo will stay like under 50. So it's like if you have a last minute trip, the Ouigo will be way cheaper. Yeah. So I think, yeah, to answer the question, which one to choose? I think it depends on what you want to do. You want to have a cheap trip, or do you need to be in Paris, like, very quickly if you or you need to go, go and come back on the same day, I would say take the Eurostar and plan it ahead. So that it's not too expensive, because the Eurostar does also operate way more during a day this week. Oh, train, I think they only operate three times a day, so you only have one in the morning and one in the evening. Yeah. So obviously you could do that, but it's going to be like a very long day on the train because you're going to be like the double amount of time on the train basically. So yeah, that's it was were the two questions. Now last, last thing I want to say, go ahead and follow this this podcast I have go ahead and click on the follow button please. I've heard so I've heard that it would be helpful. So I'm here to promote it. So please go ahead and do that wherever you listen to your, to the show, give me a rating or just, click that follow button. So you know, the next week's episode and I'm going to give you a little spoiler next week episode is going to be about DNS. The DNS, there are a lot of fun. They are an alternative education school, for teachers. So basically it's like training teachers and they are going by bus from Europe to Africa, from Denmark to Africa, And then they go through many different cities, many different countries. Yeah, all speaking German now, but yeah, basically they go fast through Europe and then they go slowly through Africa. They have a lot of investigations over there. And I interviewed a girl who participated in that specific teacher training program, which is kind of awesome, right? these people are going to be teachers, and they have travelled to so many countries and talked to so many different people. So it's like an alternative way of learning. And I kind of kind of love the idea. I learned a lot by just talking to her about this. So next week that's gonna come up. So I hope you have now clicked on the follow button and you're intrigued. And next week, Thursday, you're going to be impressed by the motivation of a lot of 18, 19 year olds who are travelling the world by bus. Thank you so much for listening and I wish you a beautiful rest of your night or day, wherever, wherever you are. Bye bye. Take care.