The story behind the name TakeBus12 seems an adequate introduction to why I set up this blog. It was in the scorching, but generally pretty cool A&O Hackerbrucke Hostel in Munich in which the foundations of TakeBus12 were born.
Having stayed a week in Munich and the surrounding Bavarian tourists traps (such as the Olympic Stadium of 1972-above), the flight home was looming which sparked the typical end of holiday conversation of “Will I ever come back?” between me my future travel partner, George (otherwise known as Brown-Toes due a tendency to step in Dog faeces). The conversation eventually led to the topic of the Gap Year, which both me and George had taken in to consideration for after A-Levels for the sole purpose of travel. My dreams of teaching English with TEFL to some unsuspecting Asian kids in some secluded Shangri-La entered the conversation only briefly to be quickly interrupted by a screw faced Brown-Toes who’s only response was “yeah but…mission :/”. I must say, he had a point. After a strong four and a half minutes of heated (note the pun) debate in our dorm room the idea of travelling closer to home was born. As much as I’d love to save the children in Shangri-La from seclusion or save those in Africarrr from Malariaaa, the idea of having a Gap Year at all was discarded in to a near-by bin alongside a ticket for a long and sleepy Munich City-Sightseeing tour from the day before. Me and George’s desires for the hectic Uni lifestyle we’d also dreamt of had eventually kicked in, kicking aside the idea of a Gap Yaahhh all together. All hope was not lost in terms of travel though, oh no! The world across the English Channel had not seen the last of me! Inter-railing, something which both our parents had done during their youth, through the summer of 2011 seemed the perfect option to cure out thirst for travel while ensuring a university place for September 2011. Once the idea of travelling Europe by train was in our heads it was never to leave and it was this idea which would give name and subject to this blog.
After an Autumn and Winter of constantly talking about the prospect of Inter-Railing, my mother took the hint and bought me Lonely Planet’s Europe on a Shoestring for Christmas. By now I had pretty much made me decision on what I wanted to do in life which was to become a journalist. Having become an eager reader of The Matador Network’s travel journal’s I decided a great way for me to get my foot in the journo business was to document my planned Inter-Rail travels and thus, in tern, this blog was created!
So I now had an idea but now I needed a name. After scowling the internet for travel blogs, all the decent blog names had been taken. As travellingman was taken and my mums suggestion of Blogging-Heck was downright absurd, I referred to my trusty Lonely Planet book. Realising I needed a name at least a tiny bit witty I decided to flick through the guide book and randomly stop the flow of pages with my finger, calling my new blog whatever road of phrase I landed on. As I quickly feathered the pages past my thumb I was only thinking the worse, I’d end up having to name my blog after some dodgy cold war dictator from Eastern-Europe or something. Luck had a different plan though and luckily I landed on the transport section of some unremembered (by me) town, city, village or hamlet. The phrase my index finger was covering read “Take bus 12.” and this blog was thus crowned takebus12.wordpress.com. Has a certain ring to it I’m sure you’ll agree.
From now till my time of departure expect updates on how the preparations for me and Brown-Toes’s Inter-Rail trip are going.
Max Thomson
