Budapest on Skates
I've been doing a little idle thinking lately, as I just feel something is missing from the metropolitan scene. As luck would have it this year's Budapest Parade (last week) gave me just the idea I needed. This year's Budapest Parade's opening was on skates (travelling from Újpest's quay up to Heroes' Square). Which reminded me of how Paris city center is shut down every Friday evening for 3 hours just to allow roller skaters a free reign of terror over their car dependent citizens.
The point is people are always saying how 'Paris is the Budapest of the West', or something like that, but on this one thing Budapest and the Mayor really have to get their act into gear. So I'm proposing turning the Grand Boulevard in Pest and some main routes over in Buda into a giant skating ring. As shown in the diagram above. Truth is I haven't measured the distance, but I figure 10 circuits of this will easily fill 3 hours of anyone's evening.
Also, being more civilised that the Parisian event, I propose that the city center only gets closed down for the skaters on a every Saturday evening after 10pm, not on Friday which is pretty busy.
And fortunately for the current (and probably future) Mayor, Demszky Gábor, this fits in nicely with his radical plans for public transportation in Budapest. He want to see a 'radical re-evaluation of public transport'. Well here you are Gabi, if it's good enough for Parisiens, why not Budapesters? You want a car free city centre, just issue school kids with skates and there'll be no looking back. The target is 2013, well give the 16 year olds a pair now and they'll be 23 by the time your targets are re-evaluated. The middle classes can all be forced to use Segways. Since the older generation already almost exclusively use public transport that's your problem solved.
I should do less thinking.
So since the passing of the Budapest Parade gave me the idea, here's a useful Hungarian phrase: 'bogarat tett vki fülébe', meaning 'to plant the seed of an idea in someone's mind'. Though literally it translates as 'to put a beetle/magot in someone's ear' (yeeuuwwhhh!). 'Bogár' or 'beetle' is a pretty useful word as its adjective 'bogaras' can mean 'dorky', 'mad about something' or 'eccentric'.
