Snow Means Christmas for Parking Scofflaws in Budapest

Tired of paying to park on the street in Budapest? Well, you may be in luck, because the recent spate of snowstorms has led to a wholly new and excellent way to screw the system. According to tabloid Bors, a debate over who is responsible for clearing the snow off of parked cars has led to a moratorium on the handing out of parking tickets on cars with snow-encrusted windshields.

What happened was that after last week's heavy snowfall, the city's public area maintenance company - FKF Zrt - cleaned many streets by simply heaving all the snow onto parked cars. Following complaints from car owners that parking controllers had messed up their cars looking to see if they had valid stickers or tickets, the company in charge of parking in town - Budapest Government Parking Kft - forbade its employees from cleaning windshields.

Given how long it takes inter-agency squabbles like this to get worked out in Budapest, it will probably be July until they agree on a solution. And given how much people here hate to pay to park on the street, we probably still be seeing cars covered with snow in August. God bless.