"I came to Budapest by bicycle - and I have to cenfess, I was really shocked by the circumstances I found myself in. The Danube bikeway between Margit hid and Petöfi hid is completely devastated. It's unbelievable. I have never seen something like this before. People told me, that the bikeway has been looking like this for several months now. It is extremly dangerous to use this bikeway, because there are so many holes, and tourists, pedestrians and cyclists have to gather together on a narrow path.I tried to cross the Danube by bicycle. On Margit hid this seemed quite dangerous to me. So I went on to Lanchid, and found out, that cycling is illegal there. Attempting to go to the city center by bike, I decided to cross the river on Erzsebet hid - and was almost killed by reckless car drivers.
Cycling is illegal on the sidewalk, and the lane on the very right is reserved to Taxi and Bus - this appearently means, I have to use the middle (2nd out of 3) lane - but obviously car drivers believed I was using a lane that "belonged" to them, and did not show any tolerance to let me ride a bicycle there. Several people were honking at me, and some took over leaving probably not ore than 10cm distance (at a speed of 60 or 70 km/h, of course).
I guess, I will come back to Budapest one day (it's a very beatiful city, you know) - but definitely not by bicycle. Officials and tourist office try to characterize Budapest as a modern city - but considering the conditions for cycling, I believed I was rather somewhere in the deep Balcans than in the middle of Europe."
Words by Dr. Christoph Aistleitner for XpatLoop.com
26.06.2009