In a “normal” country, you would probably glady pay for the public transport. You are not a thief, after all. In Hungary, you can actually get into more trouble if you pay for BKV then when you doge paying
How and why?
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A comment from Annie, so interesting that is worth posting:
I don’t like paying either, though sometimes I have to. But I think I have a far better ideology for not paying. If you check the BKV website, you can see that almost no one has to pay full fare except those who actually work and pay taxes. Public transport is free for pensioners and costs only 50% of the standard fare for students and also for parents with small children (who usually have those stupid baby trolleys that take up three person’s space on the bus). Strangely, disabled people must pay a price that is only a little less than full fare (and they can’t even use all buses because not all of them are low-floor). I guess they constitute a very small part of the voter base so no one cares about them. If everyone paid the same amount of money, I would pay too. Only the disabled should have the right to use public transport for free, but they pay more than half of the population.
Besides, BKV gets a significant amount of the taxpayers’ money, so basically it was getting money from me years before I moved to Budapest, and it’s still getting money from my whole family, though they never lived here.
I already explained in an earlier post how to beat the Budapest public transport system and not to pay for BKV. I received some comments about how unfair it was telling tourist not to pay for the ride, and anyways, it is not fair using something others pay for, blah-blah-blah.
So, now, I am going to tell you why you shouldn’t pay BKV. In case you had any moral or economical doubts about not paying, here is the releif. Ride Free, feel free of guilt.
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Bela Tibor Jeszenszky aka Flipper Öcsi (Brother Pinball) drank himself to death.
Watch him sing and act with his band ‘Step’ in the ad for City Grill, the first Hungarian Fast food chain.
You must have heard that taxi drivers preying on toursists is one of the annonying things in Budapest. With a little caution you can easily manage not to fall victim to these suckers. The main rules:
Click to find out how and why.
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The passengers of a night bus are a cross section of the night: young people going to or from a club, workers travelling through the city to an early shift, homeless sleeping on the bus.
Night buses in Budapest operate between 23.00 and 4 o’clock the following day. Around midnight the night buses can turn into clubs because many so people use the time of the journey to get hammered. On the weekends at around three or four is the after party time when you can see at least one person who is more fucked up than you are. The night bus on the way home is your last chance to pick someone up. It sounds strange but actually you can often succeed.
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Not to pay for the ride with BKV (public transport) is possibly the most popular sport in Budapest. The word for travelling without a ticket is “bliccelni”, which means literally “to be like lightning” and comes from the German word “Blitz” (Lightning).
Traditoinally, BKV checked the tickets either on the vehicles or on the way out from the metro. It took them decades to figure out that they should follow the cinema principle: check the tickets before you enter the premises. So nowadays, you have to flash your ticket or pass at every major metro or underground station before you enter.
There is a way to beat the system, we’ll give you a complete guide on free riding with the BKV. Remember: only the suckers pay, and only the stupid get caught.
Hungarian language demonstrates its greatest diversity when it is used for swearing. English is limited to the usage of four letter words when something bad happens. Hungarian employs complex, grammatically correct curses with imperative in these situations. It is possible to swear continuously in Hungarian for 30 seconds without repeating any word.
Warning! Explicit content follows! Only click the link under if you are over 18, and tolerate the use of bad words for academic purposes!
Legend says when the Romans wanted to conquer the land over the river they found a monster called Főz-Süt-Fűt living in the marshes of Pest. The monster didn’t fight the legionnaires, but he had them seduced with beauties from the East. The soldiers never returned to their camp and stayed on the left side of the river.
The monster became interested in watching the people, well, kinda mix. With time he was a true voyeur, bringing people together in the most peculiar ways and combinations. The monster is still around, maybe he lives somewhere under the city. They say if his voyeurism is not satisfied he will wake up rampage through the streets like a Godzilla.
makes an appereance in Zagar’s Bossa Astoria video at 1.30 - 1.40
WestEnd City Center (or West End City Center) is a huge shopping mall / plaza behind Nyugati Railway Station in Budapest. It opened on November 17, 1999. It became fast what it advertised: “a new centre for the city”. WestEnd City Center was the role model for all of the huge shopping malls in the region. It also used to be the biggest shopping mall (one a 50,000 m² piece of land) in Hungary, but now Arena Plaza is bigger.
The mall houses 400 over shops and businesses and also the Hilton WestEnd Hotel. It also has a 22,300 m² rooftop park with and ice rink.
