Budapest Metro Challenge

[alexmcmotor]

Hi all,

Following asking everyone at the R15 yesterday (4th June 2016) I thought I'd put this up to maybe say I'm No.1 at something on this site!

Earlier this year a friend and I were in Budapest, Hungary, on tour with one of our University societies. We thought what would be a better thing to do than ditch all our friends one morning and do a Budapest Metro Challenge, so that's what we did. The Metro there is not the most complicated system in the world, comprising of only 52 stations on 4 lines, with all the lines crossing in the centre within 2-3 stops of each other, which made finding the best connections between the ends of lines more important than what is done in the middle, which is difficult in a city you've never been to before and all the information about is in Hungarian. After planning our route the night before, early on the morning of 31st March 2016, we set off from our 'home' stop of Astoria to "Ujpest-Kozpont," the Northern terminus of Line 3, where we started our challenge after waiting for our train to turn around, starting at around 9:30am. After having to deal with ambiguously-signed tram stops (leading to one excursion in the wrong direction), getting directions out of Hungarian railway staff (the platform destination indicators were no help whatsoever) when we needed to get a train, and having fun looking out of the tram at balconies on apartment blocks that seemed to be held up by air condition units, we finished at "Kobanya-Kispest," the Southern most station of the network, at around midday, with a final time of 2 hours, 36 minutes and 46 seconds.

With that, I suppose we would wish to lay claim to the top of the Budapest Metro Challenge leaderboard, with the following entry:

Alex Kneller & Douglas Brion - 31st March 2016: 02:36:46

Here are some photos from the occasion:

[michael_churchill]

I've recently returned from a holiday on the continent, including a couple of days in Budapest. I didn't do any challenge-y stuff while I was there, mostly just using the metro when it was useful, except I did treat myself to an end-to-end-and-back-again trip on line 1. Line 1 was the original line, the second oldest underground railway in the world, after London. It opened in 1896 to celebrate the Millenium, 1000 years after the founding of Hungary. The last two of alexmcmotor's photos are from line 1 and it is as lovely is it looks. The photo of Opera station is typical - either the stations are original or they've been fittingly restored. At each station as the line follows Andrassy avenue, there is simply a staircase on each side of the road, one for catching the train going one way, one on the other side for going the other way. The stairs lead directly to the cut-and-cover platforms. If you're ever in Budapest, I recommend it.