Dont Ride a Bus

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Don't ride on a bus. And that's my only advice
now to people if you're traveling abroad. Why the Koonerman
was having a wonderful vacation in the ancestral motherland, the
homeland of my parents, Croatia, and first four or five
days incredible, Ashton and I went. It was just a

(00:21):
guy's vacation, that's how Ashton wanted it. So we went
to Debrovnik, the best known and most popular of all
cities in Croatia, with its thousand year old downtown core
full of castles, towers, forts, that's where Game of Thrones
was filmed. And it was an absolutely magnificent experience. The

(00:44):
crystal blue sea, the delicious fish, the incredible pastries, the
wonderful sun, and yes, the fact that everywhere you go
everybody's speaking English. Honestly a wonderful experience. Then we went
to the capital, Zagreb, again beautiful central European city, almost

(01:05):
a kind of a miniature Vienna. And again the food incredible,
the people as warm and nice as you'll find anywhere.
And then I made a fatal mistake. Everybody there, friends,
relatives were telling me because I needed to go to
the eastern part of the country, that's the part of
Croatia that borders Hungary and Serbia, because that's where my

(01:29):
dear aunt lives. She's eighty seven years old. She's got
a very bad heart, her health is starting to fail her.
I wanted to see her, God forbid, because this made
me the last time I ever get a chance to
see her alive. And so I you. Normally in the past,
I've taken the train to go visit her in the
eastern part of the country. All my relatives, all my friends,

(01:53):
everybody at the hotel who I was speaking to, were saying, no,
jeh Jef, Chef, don't take the train, it's too slow.
Take the bus. These are new buses, modern buses, clean buses.
They'll get you there in a couple of hours instead
of four and a half hours on this long train ride.

(02:15):
So what did the cooner man do against my better judgment.
I don't like buses. I rarely ride buses. I have
bad experiences on buses. What did I do? I took
the freaking bus. So we get We're on a double
decker bus. We get on the bus, Ashton and I
and the bus is packed, I mean packed. Now, I

(02:39):
had not just bought two tickets. I had actually reserved
two seats, and both of them were on the upper level,
near the front of the bus with a nice view well.
The bus driver says, no, no, no, no, we're not reserving anything.
It's every person for themselves. Grab the closest seat that
you can find that's available. I'm like, no, man, I

(03:04):
paid for my bus tickets. I reserve these seats. I
want those seats. So we climb up from the first level,
up the stairs to the second level. Ashton sits on
the first seat that's available. I'm now at the top
of the stairs. I pull out my iPhone. I'm like, no, Ashton,
this is not the right seat. People are sitting in

(03:26):
our seat. I think it's one f and one seat.
He's like, I don't think so, daddy. I'm like, no, Ashton,
I'm telling you. And so I'm looking at my phone.
And then, like an idiot, the bus driver slammed the
gas pedal to get the bus out of the terminal
and what's your rush, dude, take it easy. He then

(03:48):
not only slams the gas pedal, but then because he's
going to hit somebody because he's driving like an idiot,
like a nut. He slams on the brakes. Of course,
the whole bus moves forward right. I flew off the stairs,
literally flew off the stairs. It was four or five

(04:09):
feet high, and I slammed against the wall, fell on
the ground, rolled down the stairs. I initially thought I
had broken my arm. No, no, no, no. I quickly realized
I had damaged all my left side and probably fractured
some ribs. I was in pain. I was in agony.

(04:33):
I have to tell you I've never felt such pain
in my life. The only thing I can compare it
to is taking a knife, sticking it in your left
side and turning and turning and twisting and turning. After
fifteen minutes, I finally got myself up, walked up the

(04:54):
stairs and took the last seat available. But let me
tell you what I will ever forget. As they lay
on the ground in absolute pain, screaming, yelling, and I'm
talking absolute it was torture, absolute agony. Not one person

(05:15):
offered to help. No one lifted a finger. They would
have walked over my body if they could have. Finally,
the bus driver got up, walked over to me as
I'm lying on the ground. If you can imagine I'm
going ah, oh, my god ah. And he asked me

(05:36):
in Croatian do you want me to get an ambulance?
And my answer back to him in Croatian was no,
I don't want you to get an ambulance. I'm thinking,
are you crazy an ambulance in Croatia in this country? A.
I don't have health insurance. You know I'm traveling abroad.
And B keep me away from a Croatian hospital. Keep

(05:58):
me away from a Croatian doctor, because I think they're
gonna make the problem even worse. I may end up
dying in Croatia. Long story short. We made the trip
to see my aunt. I was taken Adville. Luckily, we
packed some Adville. I was popping to Adville every couple hours.
I saw my wonderful ant. We had a wonderful time together.

(06:19):
Five hours we spent talking, reminiscing. I could not sleep
that night at the local hotel. I was in such pain.
Went back to Zagreb. We caught a flight. It was
time to leave from Zagreb to Paris, Paris to Boston.
The plane ride back Air France economy brutal, absolutely brutal.

(06:44):
It was like riding a sardine can. I was scrunched
in on all sides. My legs were killing me, my
knees were killing me. Obviously, my left side was killing me.
My rear end was killing me, My lower back was
killing me. This should be against the Geneva Conventions. This
should be considered a war crime. For God's sake, to

(07:06):
have to fly economy air France and you're six foot
three like the cooner Man. Long story short. I made
it back to the Home of the Brave and the
Land of the Free. I couldn't. When I saw that
American flag, I smiled from ear to ear. We went
to the emergency room, and yes, the Cooner Man's fractured

(07:29):
some ribs. They gave me steroids, muscle relaxans, strong doses
of ibuprofen, and the Cooner Man is back on the air.
But you want to know what I take from all
of this. Don't ride a bus. It's just not worth it.