The 120th Harley-Davidson Festival starts in Budapest on Thursday

It starts on Thursday, with the opening at 11:00 a.m. with Karen and Bill Davidson. I was already on site today and took a look at what was going on. It's about 34 degrees and the time is running! You can feel the excitement because tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. the gates will open for you and everything should be perfect.

I met one of the main organizers of the event right in the morning, it is Attila Dobai, he is the Harley-Davidson dealer from Budapest and from the Harley event at Ballaton. His son actually does the real work, Attila tends to look after guys like me and showed me everything interesting on the site, I think it's also important that I'm up to date with what's going on, you've got something out of it too.

You have to notice this again and again, the people in Budapest are very hospitable and many even know a little German. You don't run a red light here, that's really noticeable. It's my first time in Budapest and I'm already really liking it.

One thing is now save, the new CVO Street and CVO Road Glide models have arrived, I could see the CVO Road Glide in the special Whiskey Neat / Raven Metallic paint finish as I was driving past. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take any photos, but that's coming. But one thing is already clear, in the original it looks completely different, at first glance I actually liked the CVO Road Glide, let's see when I'm actually standing in front of it.

In Budapest you see the Harley-Davidson flags and banners everywhere, you are obviously welcome here. The city is also very motorcyclist friendly. Motorcycles are allowed to drive in the bus lane and if there is a traffic light system for buses, this also applies to motorcyclists. A completely new feeling is that the drivers make room on their own when you want to meander through the middle. We don't know that much in Germany.

The 120th Anniversary event area and the EXPO

The event area is really big, Harley-Davidson really took off here, the stage and the highlight is actually the EXPO hall, where the custom bike show will also be located.

I've never seen anything like this from the company, there are already really nice Harleys here, a really awesome Pan America conversion from England can be found here, which was Harley-Davidson Sykes , from Bridges in the south of England. You just have to look at the implementation of the project, the guys can do something and are generally always very good at the conversions. I've already driven a really nice Sportster conversion in Spain.

My friend Aykut (AT-American Cycles), who you should know from countless bike shows, or from DMAX with his own show, or the episode at Orange County Choppers in northern New York where he built the GTO bike for the show. He will be putting two of his custom bikes in the show.

Harley-Davidson has of course introduced all of its new models here, the Bagger Race Bikes are also here and many models from Harley-Davidson's 120-year history. But as already mentioned, most of the pictures come afterwards.

At KESSTECH, which has its base on the outside area, there are conversions of a Road Glide ST in carbon look and the highlight is a new Breakout 2023, which they have built in their own way in a 120th anniversary design.

The 120th Anniversary T-Shirts

I've already discovered a few event T-shirts that you can buy on the event site starting tomorrow. There is another Harley-Davidson Fashion Store , they have a 120th Anniversary Dealer Shirt that also says Budapest on it, which of course fits and would be a little tip on the side if it could be a little more.

I can already say that it's a great city worth seeing, with very nice people, and the tour here has already been worth it for me.