Apparently, according to a few Western tabloid journalists, Budapest is the dirtiest city in the world.

I mean, really? This claim is so stupid that no one can really think this is true, right? Can’t I just take this day off? 

EDIT: Just talked to management. They said I still got to fact-check this. Sigh.

According to Erin Deborah at the Daily Mail and Ben Cost at the New York Post, Hungary’s capital city has been ‘rated’ the ‘dirtiest’ city in the world by travellers. Both ‘journalists’—I can’t not put that word in scarequotes at this stage—cite ‘research’ conducted by a company called Radical Storage.

What does this company specialize in? Transport research? Tourism analytics?

No. They help tourists find bag storage spots.

Not exactly Einsteins, are they?

So what methodology did these cutting-edge researchers use? Air quality data? Peer-reviewed double-blind surveys?

They scraped English-language Google reviews of top landmarks for uses of the words ‘dirty’ and ‘clean’. 

Clearly, if they were medical researchers, we would have cured cancer by now.

Okay, okay. I’m not going to rag on these guys too hard. The blog run by the company is tiny, and the listicle was clearly run as a fun experiment by their PR team, who were clearly just interested in drumming up some clicks for the business. 

On top of this, the PR guys who drew all this up were pretty clear about their research’s limitations. First, it only looked at the top 100 cities for tourism as laid out by Euromonitor. Secondly, it was only sampling a small, English-only, online userbase. 

‘Unlike many other Slop Check topics, the researchers here clearly were not being malicious’

Even then, when they posit why Budapest ranked so highly, they suggested it was not because of some failing on the part of the Hungarians, but actually down to how successful Budapest has been as a tourist destination. They even cite data showing that tourism grew by 12 per cent last September compared to the same month the previous year. 

Unlike many other Slop Check topics, the researchers here clearly were not being malicious.

Sadly, I cannot for certain say the same of Tweedledee and Tweedledum at the Post and the Mail. Neither article makes clear how poor a research source Radical Storage is. Both also bury the fact that Budapest ranked worst out of a list of the 100 top urban travel destinations, leaving plenty of—to quote the US president—‘shitholes’ to be left unscrutinized. 

But wait, Deborah at the Mail backs up her baggage guys’ research? With what? With Reddit posts!

And we all know Reddit posters are never wrong about anything, right?

But is what this pair of dimwits claims actually untrue? Can I prove Budapest really isn’t the world’s dirtiest city?

I mean, it doesn’t have Delhi’s ‘toxic trash mountains’—to cite The Guardian.

So, yes. Budapest ain’t that dirty.

‘Deborah at the Mail backs up her baggage guys’ research? With what? With Reddit posts!’

But it goes further than that. Ask anyone who visits here how Budapest compares to the likes of London, Paris or Brussels, and they will tell you the Hungarian capital is borderline spotless compared to its Western rivals. 

In fact, personally, I find it annoying how often they clean the streets outside my house. The cleaners are noisy and, damnit, I want to sleep in on a Sunday morning!

My colleagues also wanted to point out that the article was written in and around the time of lomtalanitás—a period when Hungarians can leave refuse outside their home for the local authorities to pick up and properly dispose of. Such times lead to—very temporary—increases in street trash.

However, honestly, I barely think this is worth mentioning. Even then, the trash here is nothing compared to an average evening in Brussels, where you count every day you manage to get home without stepping in human faeces a lucky one.

As a side note, the Daily Mail article references Budapest having dilapidated buildings. This is partially true, especially compared to other countries.

You know, countries that weren’t forced to exist under Communism for decades last century?

Well, it’s not like Hungary is doing anything to rebuild the facades of Budapest, so I guess their criticism is still valid…

Oh wait.

Yeah. This is dumb.

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