Budapest offers free train seats to refugees
The Budapest municipality has offered to pay for 3,000 train seat tickets to help refugees from Ukraine, Mayor Gergely Karacsony said on Facebook on Thursday. The mayor suggested that the government's offer of free travel for refugees on Hungary's railway lines "is still not entirely free" as they need seats to go with the tickets which they could not buy unless they had forints. He said that exchanging the Ukrainian currency had become difficult in Budapest, while an increasing number of refugees could not use their bank cards either.
“Civil activists, volunteers are seen in front of the box offices paying for the ‘free’ tickets,” Karacsony said.
The mayor said they had contacted civil organisations helping refugees, and said he hoped “by the time the city’s seat tickets run out, the government will have changed the rules to ensure that travel by train is in fact free for the refugees”.
