A Journey Through the “Potterverse”: Our Coach Driver Tells All
Text: EUROBUS
It began not with a broomstick but with a moped. Over time the vehicles got ever bigger – today Finn Siegenthaler is a full-time coach driver at EUROBUS. For five years he has been travelling through Europe by coach. His favourite destinations are northern Germany, Scandinavia and England. The tour “In the Footsteps of the Sorcerer's Apprentice” also takes him to the land of castles and moors: a tour put together especially for Harry Potter fans and, thanks to its popularity, running for the fourth time this year. The tour starts in London, one of the most important settings of the novels.
The first time he drove through London, Finn was nervous. Today he knows what a coach driver has to watch out for in the city on the Thames. And in any case: no city is as bad for coach drivers as Rome – the EUROBUS drivers all agree on that.
“If a driver gets nervous, it rubs off on the passengers,” Finn knows. From the moment he loads the luggage, he is there for his guests around the clock. For him the journey starts even earlier, as he prepares thoroughly. By the time he sets off, he has already arrived at the destination in his mind. His favourite stretch as a coach driver: through Dartmoor towards Land's End.
From Platform 9 ¾ to Diagon Alley
For the Harry Potter fans the journey continues inland: London is just one of many stops on this tour, which leads to the filming and inspiration locations of the film and book series. A great highlight besides the capital, where travellers can look forward to a special city tour of the filming locations (such as the iconic “Platform 9 ¾”), is the Warner Bros. Studios in Watford.
That impressed him most, Finn says: “The sets, the costumes – simply everything.” Before that, a stop is planned in the university city of Oxford, where many of the places that served as backdrops for the films are found – above all for the interiors, corridors and staircases of the “Hogwarts” school of wizardry. J. K. Rowling, the creator of the most successful book series of all time, already had many of these locations in mind while writing. One of the many reasons the film adaptations became a success is that they mostly chose as filming locations exactly those settings that had served Rowling as models for the books.
The coach gets more colourful all the time, as every traveller is by now dressed in the colours of “their house”. The Warner Bros. Studios souvenir shop sells everything a Harry Potter fan's heart could desire. The tour continues to Lacock Abbey, another central filming location, and to York, the city with the imposing minster and the street The Shambles, which served as the model for Diagon Alley. As varied as the tour is, so varied are the ages of the travellers: from children to grandparents, everyone is here. Finn, too, became a fan through the tour: “After the first time, I went home and watched all the films again.” Since then he has been thoroughly hooked on the “Potterverse”.
Hogsmeade and magical flying lessons
A steam locomotive takes you from Pickering to Goathland, or as the “Potterheads” would say: Hogsmeade. The magical journey ends with a visit to Alnwick Castle, the second-largest inhabited castle in England. This is where the exterior shots of Hogwarts – the flying lessons on broomsticks, for example – were filmed.
On a ferry in Newcastle, the group finally begins the journey home, full of magical memories.