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Update: This deal is not officially available to United States residents. There is a drop down menu to select country of residence that offers Germany, Italy, France or “Other”. When selecting “Other”, it gives a message saying the promo is currently only available to those residing in the aforementioned countries. It looks like you can pick one of those countries and then change the credit card billing address to the United States, but YMMV as to whether the purchase will go through or you’ll have a problem down the road.
European bus operator FlixBus is running an interesting promotion: you can buy a voucher now that is good for a one-way direct bus or train on their routes for 14 Euros. The voucher will be valid for 3 years, theoretically giving you plenty of time to put it to use after the pandemic is over. Of course, that’s assuming that FlixBus is still with us in 2023. Given the current need for airlines to receive billions from their governments, I’m not sure I’d go betting on a bus company in fifteen dollar increments, but you do you. It could certainly make for some good deals.
The Deal
- European bus company FlixBus is offering open date vouchers valid for 3 years that are good for 1-way direct bus service on their routes for €14.
- Direct link to deal
- Link to FlixBus route map
Key Terms
- Vouchers can be used for both FlixBus and FlixTrain.
- Valid for direct FlixBus and FlixTrain rides (interconnexions are excluded).
- Purchase a max of 3 vouchers per transaction (no info on a max that can be used per transaction when redeeming them, but I’d guess that on both purchase and redemption you could just do multiple transactions as necessary to meet your needs)
- See full terms on the promo page
Quick Thoughts
The big “gotcha” is that these vouchers are only good on nonstop routes — if you have to transfer, you’ll need two vouchers.
On many routes, this will only represent a small discount (or you may even be able to get the bus for even less when you plan in advance and catch a sale). However, on some routes this is a deal. For instance, I looked at Berlin to Kiev in August (I wouldn’t be confident that bus trip will happen, but couldn’t find pricing for summer 2021 yet so this was as close a comparison as I could get). While there were many itineraries that required a stop, there was also a direct bus as well.
The one-way nonstop price on the several dates I checked was 65 Euros. Getting that bus instead for 14 Euros seems like an amazing deal for the masochists among us who want to pay any amount to cram themselves into a bus seat for 21.5 hours. Keep in mind that the likes of Wizz Air or Ryanair will get you there is just over two hours for $33-65 or so.
That said, I’d guess that maybe bus travel will be more popular than plane travel for a while? If I were 20 years younger and had 1.5 fewer children, I’d probably take a gamble on this, but I’ll leave this one to those of you who still have that youthful spirit of adventure.
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[…] €14 each way for 3-year open bus tickets in Europe w/ FlixBus […]
Hey Nike,
Any response to the “must live in Germany, Italy, or France”?
Huh. I had missed that comment and don’t remember seeing that field when I wrote this QD. That’s odd as Stephen Pepper got the email and forwarded it to me and he presumably doesn’t have his home address set as Germany, Italy, or France and he got the email. Interestingly, I see that I can choose Italy as my country of residence but then change the billing address on the credit card to the United States…so it might still work, but YMMV. I’ll update this post, thanks.
[…] Hat tip to Frequent Miler […]
I’d rather hitch hike across Europe like a gypsy than ride FlixBus for 28 hours.
We rode FB twice during our Euro trip and they were bad and horrible. The first was London to Brussels, a 7 hour direct trip. It took our bus driver 4 hours to get to the central London train station. Then we drove around central London in circles for almost 3 hours because the idiot driver couldn’t figure out how to get out of London. It’s easy: go south till you hit the river, get on a bridge, and keep driving south till you get to the Eurotunnel. He had the nerve to stop for a 30min break after 2 hours of driving in circles around London. It’s like there’s no device that can tell you how to get from point A to pint B. We arrived in Brussels close to 11pm, over double the original transit time.
The next FB trip was Brussels to Dusseldorf and that was less eventful, but the bus still left a half hour late and arrived 3 hours late. Both occasions there wasn’t a single Flix employee at either bus station or any information for us. The website tracking was always wrong. No organization, no signage, just awful. Grey hound in the US is light years better.
With that said, we did a OuiBUS from Cologne to Amsterdam and that was pretty crappy too. Half way through they turned the a/c off and my wife was kicked off the wifi for exceeding the allotted data which we didn’t even know about.
Good times Europe, good times.
Our Flixbus rides in Italy and Switzerland have been great! Cheap, on time and comfortable. I’d ride again in a heartbeat, sorry you had trouble. We didn’t take long rides like yours, just 1-2 hours.
Must live in Italy or Germany
FYI, the Euro symbol goes before the number, just like the US Dollar symbol.
Thanks for the comment. You inspired me to do some further research because I’ve seen it written both ways — and in fact, the email from FlixBus about this promo says exactly this (copied and pasted from their email):
“FlixDeal! 14€ to all destinations”
It says that in several places in the email, so that’s what I went with (but I do see on their website where it is written with the symbol first also).
On this BBC page:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z823cwx/revision/10
I originally saw via Google this bit (which is further down the page when you click through):
—–
Did you know?
The Euro is the official currency of Germany and Austria. The symbol for the Euro is €, and it is often placed after the number, unlike the pound sign – £ – which is placed before the number.
—–
However, upon reading the info at the top and at Wikipedia, it seems that in English, the Euro symbol properly goes before the number whereas in most other European languages it goes after the number (which matches with my experience when I lived in Germany briefly and in most other European countries since English is not the official language in most of the countries that use the Euro).
I find it interesting that the FlixBus email (written in English) puts it after the number while their English-language website puts it before.
At any rate, since we’re obviously using English around here, I’ll update the post and switch that around and stick with in front of the number from now on. Thanks.
Those silly Europeans, they can’t make up their mind! It look strange to me placed after the number, so like you I checked Wikipedia and it showed it before the number, which just looks right. I guess maybe it’s not a hard rule unlike the USD symbol placement (seeing $ after a number is a pet leave of mine)