When The Planes Stop

Due to the volcano activity in İceland, there were no flight services from Europe to basically anywhere. What do you do when you are stuck in central Europe and you really want to get home? How do you help your close family to get home?

1- Call the bus companies. They are the best source of information. They will tell you which routes are the best and what visa you need. They had better and clear information than the embassy for sure.

2- Call your travelling friends. They also have better experience. Ask about which routes nd how long.

3- Use the travellers forums on the net, to reach a local guy. Remember they can communicate with the local bus company in local language which is crucial for you.

4- Call that person you met a year ago who happens to live there. He can make your life easy.

Internet has good information but it is to wide and it is in local language. Also some of those hard to get bus companies do not have web sites.(Yes there is a big world out there who doesn’T speak english and use the web.)

Result:
Train from Frankfurt to Budapest via Vienna.
Train from Budapest to Bucharest (a very slow one)
Bus from Bucharest direct to Istanbul. Much quicker than the train and people talking your local language.

Hints:
Metro Bus company has 5 busses daily between Sofia and Istanbul
They have web site and call centerç

Varan Bus operates from Vienna to Istanbul. But Turkish citizen needs visa for Serbia (even for transit).
Varan has web site and call center. One of the oldest and high quality bus companies in Turkiye.
Ortadoğu Turism. 2 daily bus from Bucharest to Istanbul. Decent busses. 50 eu for a person. No web site buth here is the phone numbers. They were the life savers.
Tel 009 (0212) – 512 77 46, 009 (0212) – 632 76 46.

In Budapest there is a bus company called Volans. And if you are lucky you can get a person to talk you over the phone. Forget sundays, forget english, do not bother before 9:30 during the weekdays. Ok you get the picture.