Here area about two dozens images snapped while briefly out and about on quick bike rides over the weekend, while in Budapest for the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championships, mostly from along the Danube. Above the Buda Castle at night and below a turtle staring at a young lyre player’s behind at the Japanese Garden on Margaret Island. Because that’s the image you didn’t realize you needed to see today.

That’s a Yellow-Bellied Slider, a highly problematic invasive species that is pushing the European Pond Turtle, the only native species in Hungary, to the fringes of survival -here and elsewhere on the continent. In 2016 it was added to the European Union’s Invasive Alien Species of Union concern list –along with Red-eared Sliders and Cumberland Sliders– and it is now illegal to import, breed, transport, commercialise, exchange or intentionally release them into the wild anywhere in the EU.

Margaret Island, a 2.5km long and 500m wide island on the Danube, is well worth a visit, even on an early Sunday afternoon when visitor numbers reach their weekly peak. There are busy sections with cafes and chimney cake vendors and bars, but plenty of quiet ones two, including sprawling gardens and park settings and a mini-zoo that is home to about a dozen different duck species.

Some traffic resumed on the Danube but the river levels remain alarmingly low in many areas, with ongoing restrictions in place.

Twetny-one more images below.

Photos from 11, 12 and 13 September, 2026.