It was night and the air was a nice autumn temperature when I arrived in the train station in Budapest, Hungary. I had just spent a long day on small series of trains coming from Prague and was ready to stretch my legs and go find a nice Hungarian dinner.
As always, when I first arrived I had no idea where anything was and was ready to have a wander to figure things out. One of the very first systems that most travelers need to familiarize themselves with is the local metro and transit system (if they want to actually travel around the city.)
After a few minutes of following signs and exploring the train station I came across some ticket machines for The Metro. Nice n simple, right? Well, not quite…
It turns out that the metro ticket machines only accept certain payment technology known as NFC (Near Frequency Communication) and Pin & Chip technology to purchase tickets (the standard in Europe). Here in the US, we almost exclusively use Mag Stripes (the black band on the back of your credit card) so I wasn’t able to buy tickets to get on the metro with my credit card (even though I had a visa card and there was a big Visa logo on the machine.)
So since I couldn’t buy tickets with my credit card, I was forced to pay cash.
There was only one problem. Hungary has its own currency (The Hungarian Forint – HUF) and since I just got off of the train, I didn’t have any. I looked around the station for an ATM but didn’t manage to find any anywhere nearby. There were a couple different money exchange booths that I saw but only one of them was open and I don’t like to use money changers at places like train stations and airports because their exchange rates are usually absurd.
I don’t like to carry too much cash when I travel because I get better exchange rates, rewards points/miles and added security with credit cards but I usually opt to carry about $100 for situations where cash is still king. I pulled out about $60 from my bag and was walking toward the exchange booth when I was approached by a guy standing just 10-15 feet outside of the booth. He said something in Hungarian (which I obviously didn’t understand) and I gave him a blank look since I wasn’t sure what he said. When he noticed the clueless look on my face he quickly switched to English to say “What you have? I give you better price.” As he pulls out a nice fat stack of assorted bills form his pocket.
At this point, my internal travel defense mechanism came to life. This guy obviously has some nice street hustle and was quick to put pressure on me to buy. How am I about to get hustled?
He said “They give you 193 per dollar. I give you 200!” It certainly didn’t sound like a deal to me but I looked at the rates on the currency traders board (which I knew were going to fleece me pretty bad already) and it did say 193 for $1 USD on the sign at the money exchanger.
I looked at my friend (who was already googling exchange rates to see if that was correct) and asked him “Casey, can you calculate $60 x 200?” The math is actually really simple but I was way tired and just spent hours cramped in a train so my brain calculator was about as useless as it possibly could be. My mystery money changer being as pushy as he was, didn’t make it easy to calculate after a long day on a train either.
“Google says the exchange rate is 243, not 200” my friend says to me. I replied with a quick “Dude, we’re at a currency exchange in the city’s largest train station. We can expect to get screwed no matter where we go and this guy or ready for business with cash in hand”
I remember thinking that I would rather give the profit to this guy in the street who is right here, right now with the audacity to make a few bucks. I wanted to conduct business with this guy simply because I know that one of the biggest pains about dealing with an exchange is not just the absurd rates that you always get but they often require you to show your passport and fill out forms just to change your money. Since I’m not the biggest fan of bureaucracy and paperwork I opted to trust that this guy was not selling counterfeit bills or trying to rob me.
I made the exchange.
$60.00 USD for 12,000 HUF. I had Hungarian Forint in hand. Now it was time to buy a couple train tickets and see what Budapest had in store for me and my friend.
“Now lets see if this is real” I say to my friend as we are walking towards the Metro ticket machines.
The money wasn’t fake and it worked in the ticket machines just fine. We were now on our way into the city’s center. And that was my first 10 mins in Budapest, Hungary
I tip my hat to you Hungarian street hustling entrepreneur with fat stacks of HUF. May self-interest, profit incentive, and street hustle carry you into prosperity as you manage to screw money exchanges & banks out of their absurd fees. Köszönöm!
