Fights, vomit and blowjobs: Riding the Uniexpress completely sober

I have used the Uniexpress on several occasions, but every time I’ve been drunk. The journey to Neon and back is always carnage and, as I found out when riding it sober last week, a completely bizarre experience. Here are some of the high and low points from the ride.

10:50pm

With ticket in hand and only water as my drink of choice, I departed the comforts of my room and headed to the bus interchange to start queueing. I realised quickly that actually getting on the Uniexpress sober was much easier said than done. Without the aggressive confidence of vodka, I was unwilling to elbow other freshers to the floor to board the bus. So instead I allowed myself to be pushed to the back of the queue repeatedly until the driver took pity on me and helped me board.

11pm

First impressions were not great. I do not remember the stale smell of takeaway food the last time I drunkenly boarded the bus, but there was definitely a hint of week old fried chicken about the seats. The bus was packed, people were sitting all along the aisle between the seats and on the stairs. For the first part of my journey I decide to take a seat on the top floor, next to a guy who had never ridden the Uniexpress, and was visiting a friend at Warwick. He later described the experience to me as “mildly scarring”.

11:10pm

By this point there was a lot of selfie taking and singing, including a lovely rendition of Bieber’s “Sorry”, that lacked tune but made up for it in passion and volume.

11:20pm

I want to go home. It smells of sick, people are chanting aggressively and someone abused me for wearing my backpack. Most people on the top floor of the bus were amusing themselves by drawing a penis in the condensation covered windows, which just goes to show that we may be Warwick students but a few drinks later and we will be reduced to the mental age of seven-years-olds.

11:25pm

I’m really impressed with the number of drinks I’ve seen on board, apparently drunk Warwick students are really good at smuggling alcohol onto public transport. Someone even had a bottle of tequila. And one guy, on finding out that I was sober, earnestly offered me his vodka and coke, before his flatmate shouted across the bus “stop chirpsing Nick, God!”

11:30pm

Yep, someone threw up. I was speaking to one of the riders at the back of the bus while his friend suddenly turned a bit yellow and was sick absolutely everywhere. I have never seen so much sick. I didn’t know a person could be that sick. The friend then proceeded to fall in it and somehow managed to stagger of the bus (and presumably into Neon) with a vague “mate, I feel a bit ill”.

The driver was not pleased, but apparently vomiting freshers is a regular occurrence. I felt pretty sorry for the driver, but more than anything I was just happy to finally get off the bus.

An interlude of three hours, while students dance, drink, and drink some more before heading back to the bus stop.

02:50am

By now the queue for Vialli’s is mad, and most groups of friends have at least one near paralytic companion who is being forced fed chips and water. It is with immense trepidation that I queue to get back on the bus.

03:00am

People started arguing with the driver because they could not bring their kebab on board. Apparently students get pretty emotional when someone tries to part them from their food. But quite a few people valiantly managed to smuggle their cheesy chips onto the bus, and only one person bought their food back up when we started moving again. I was impressed.

03:10am

I am now back on the bus, but for some reason the surfaces and seats are much stickier than I remember on the way here. I decide to brave sitting on the bottom of the bus this time and the main thing I remember about this part of the journey was that it was crazy loud.

03:15am

I started asking around a few freshers if they had had any funny or strange experiences while riding Uniexpress. One Maths fresher (who wanted to remain anonymous) had gotten a blowjob on the backseat of the bus two weeks ago, while on the way back from Kasbah. Apparently it was the “ride of his life”. Another Physics fresher piped up at this point to let me know her “friend got fingered last week on the bus”. Nice.

03:20am

Spirits seemed to be pretty high apart from one group of girls who were having an argument because “so and so was being a selfish slut” and “she isn’t even that pretty anyway”. I made myself scarce pretty quickly at this point. One of them definitely looked like she could take me in a fight for looking at her the wrong way.

I started speaking to some more of the passengers and the quote of the night had to go to fresher Anna who concluded that “Uniexpress is for poor people, you won’t find anyone from Bluebell on it.”

03:30am

All my faith in humanity is lost by now, and I want my mum.

03:45am

I finally get home, only to find my coat smells of someone else’s kebab and my shoes are unnaturally sticky on the soles. Wonderful. The main thing I have taken away from this experience is that a) alcohol is amazing and b) I have a new found respect for the poor drivers and reps who have to ride the Uniexpress sober day in and day out. They are the unsung heroes of University life.