Multi-country journey from Basel to Bratislava

Very late in the evening I safely made my way from the hotel to the Flixbus stop for the first leg of my journey to Bratislava: a couple of hours on the bus to Strasbourg, where I had a four-hour changeover in the middle of the night. There wasn't anywhere to go inside, but I managed to find a covered area on one side of the bus stop area with a seat where I could set up camp for the next few hours and stay dry if it started to rain. I could see that we were close to a bridge over a river - it would have been nice to walk round a bit and explore if it hadn't been between 1 and 5 a.m. and I didn't have anywhere safe to leave my big case. Instead, I kept myself awake by reading and, at a couple of points around 4 a.m., by blearily trying to dredge up some French from 20 years ago to use in response to an old lady who had come up and started asking me things....

The bus to Bratislava came on time and left Strasbourg at 05:10. The journey took 13 hours but there were no issues and time passed relatively quickly. We made stops at Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Munich and Vienna, plus the occasional service station. At the stop in Vienna the coach went through the coach wash while we were inside - something I hadn't experienced before.

On arrival in Bratislava I found my way to the magnificently-named Wild Elephants Hostel pretty easily, admiring the architecture as I went. It was about 7 p.m. by the time I'd got settled into my dorm, and I was too knackered to go out again, so I made snacks leftover from the bus trip my dinner and after going online for a bit, got an early night.