Buying a bicycle in Lake Balaton, Hungary
Jul 26th 2009, 2:32 pm
#1
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Thread Starter
Joined: Jul 2009
Location: Balatonkerestur, Hungary
Posts: 62
Buying a bicycle in Lake Balaton, Hungary
We have recently arrived in the Lake Balaton area and the first thing we wanted to do was to get a couple of bicycles - everyone here seems to use them and as our small part towards saving the planet we thought that we would try to reduce our petrol usage.
:-)
It seems (but I am certainly open to advice from others who have been living in Hungary longer than we have) that there is not exactly much of a second hand market here. Unlike the UK where you can find loads of possibilities in local papers or on internet sites like gumtree, Hungary doesn't seem to have a similar network available or at least not one which is readily available to non Hungarian speakers.
Of course these days bicycles can be bought almost anywhere (Tesco being an obvious choice) but the bikes available in this type of outlet are not of the best quality being both heavy and not easy to maintain (no quick release nuts for wheels for example).
In the end we decided to go to a specialist shop in Keszthely (there is another one near the market in Fonyod (about 100 metres towards Budapest on the main road).
Two bicycles were duly purchased at a cost of around 350 sterling (for both).
Now we just have to acclimatise our derrieres to sitting on a hard saddle for hours at a time!
:-)
It seems (but I am certainly open to advice from others who have been living in Hungary longer than we have) that there is not exactly much of a second hand market here. Unlike the UK where you can find loads of possibilities in local papers or on internet sites like gumtree, Hungary doesn't seem to have a similar network available or at least not one which is readily available to non Hungarian speakers.
Of course these days bicycles can be bought almost anywhere (Tesco being an obvious choice) but the bikes available in this type of outlet are not of the best quality being both heavy and not easy to maintain (no quick release nuts for wheels for example).
In the end we decided to go to a specialist shop in Keszthely (there is another one near the market in Fonyod (about 100 metres towards Budapest on the main road).
Two bicycles were duly purchased at a cost of around 350 sterling (for both).
Now we just have to acclimatise our derrieres to sitting on a hard saddle for hours at a time!
