Cars
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Passengers
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Children included
As you approach the airport, the line of cars near the Shell petrol station is hard to miss: on the hard shoulder, in the grass, along the edge of the ditch, one behind the other. It is not a car park – no marked bays, no barrier, no cameras. People simply leave their cars there, many of them for a full week, before boarding their flight.
The reasoning is easy to follow: parking is one of those items that seems easiest to cross off the list before a trip. It is worth thinking through, though, exactly what you save this way – and what you give up for it.
What speaks for it
- It costs nothing. This is the only argument, but undeniably a strong one: zero forints.
- There is nothing to arrange in advance. No booking, no time slot, no registration – you arrive, you stop, you carry on.
And what speaks against it
- The car is left completely unattended. No camera, no fence, nobody keeping an eye on it. It stands for days on open ground, right next to a busy road, in plain sight – and accessible to anyone. If it gets broken into, damaged or hit during that time, there is no footage, no witness and nobody to turn to. And you carry that risk not for a couple of hours, but for the entire trip, from hundreds or thousands of kilometres away.
- Insurance will not necessarily help either. Compensation goes to those who can prove what happened – and proof is exactly what is missing here. Without comprehensive cover the damage is one hundred percent yours; if you do have it, be sure to check what your policy says about a car parked outside a designated space.
- It is not even that convenient. A space is not guaranteed here either: at peak times you may well arrive and find nowhere to pull in – an hour or two before departure, that is the worst possible news. And if you do manage to stop, you are still not at the terminal: from there you have to continue on the 200E bus, luggage and all, exactly as if you had set off from home by public transport in the first place.
How much do you actually save?
Parking by the ditch is good for one reason only: it is free. That holds only as long as nothing happens, though – so it is worth setting the risk beside it.
A typical four- or five-day stay at an airport car park is available from 9,000–10,000 HUF – you can check current prices any time in the car park price comparison. That is roughly what you save by the roadside. A single resprayed scratched door or one replaced side window, on the other hand, can cost several times that.
So the balance is not between 9,000–10,000 HUF and zero. Parking by the ditch really is zero in the good case – but in the less good case it can be an item running to a hundred thousand forints. And which of the two it turns out to be is not your decision.
A car park with a fence, a barrier and cameras is predictable by comparison: you know in advance that you have a space, you know what it costs, somebody is responsible for the car while you are away, and the transfer takes you straight to the terminal – no getting on a bus with your luggage. It takes a few minutes before you leave to compare the prices and services of the car parks near the airport – and afterwards you will not spend your holiday wondering whether your car is still in one piece.