From his great-grandparents' house to the top of the podium – Bálint Czimmer, European Champion in Interior Painting
"In just a few days you can transform an apartment to make you feel like you're entering a completely different place," says 20-year-old Bálint Czimmer, who took the top of the podium in the European Skills Championships (Euroskills) in the painting and decorating category this September. The young man from the village of Kölked has worked hard for years to achieve success. He now also teaches prospective painters, but he has yet to get used to students calling him Mr. Teacher.
Family teamwork
Even as a child, Bálint Czimmer was learning the trade beside his father.
"Dad is a cabinetmaker and my brother and I always helped him in the afternoons, after school, and at the weekends. He assembled the cupboards at home, which we took to the apartments and houses at weekends, where we installed the kitchen furniture. But if there were simple electrical installations, for example, we did that, too" he tells us of the early days.
It was actually by chance that he chose to become a painter. "At the end of eighth grade I couldn't decide what I wanted to be, I think a lot of people feel that way nowadays, too. My grades were not that good, so I didn't want to go to grammar school. In the end, I decided on painting and stonemasonry." That's how he ended up in Pécs, at the Mihály Pollack Technical School, which turned out to be a good choice. Bálint took a liking to interior painting, and his teachers noticed his talent and diligence.
With their encouragement, after four years of hard work, he qualified for the World Skills Championships (WordSkills) last year, where he came 5th, qualifying for this year's European Championships (EuroSkills).
At the beginning of September, in Gdansk, Poland, he stood on the top step of the podium among painters and decorative painters.
Hungary took part for the eighth time at the European vocational skills competition, also known as EuroSkills between 5-9 September. In Gdansk, 576 young people from 32 countries competed, with 26 of them representing Hungary in 22 events. In addition to Bálint Czimmer, gold medals were also awarded to János Hidvégi, web developer, Daniel Nagy, building carpenter, and Márton Offner, plumber and heating engineer. Tamás Bandúr and Zsolt Koncsik were European champions in the team competition for IT system operators.
Smooth as a sheet of paper
But what is the difference between an interior painter and a decorative painter? "We do wallpaper and door glazing in the same way as a painter, but we paint the wall so that it's almost as smooth as a sheet of paper. We then design the pattern on that surface and finally paint the motif freehand," explains Bálint Czimmer. At first glance, it sounds almost like art. "However, decorative painting is all about bound shapes, every task has to be done to the millimeter, so I think it's closer to architecture," he says.
Bálint lives with his family in Kölked, a village of 900 inhabitants. "We live in a family house where you can walk through the garden to my great-grandfather's house, which is now empty. There I took one of the rooms, scraped off the old paint, made the surface of the wall smooth, and practiced painting there." But he also commuted and travelled a lot to become a better interior painter. To prepare intensively for the competition, he had to move to Budapest. He practiced on weekdays and weekends - that's how he spent six months at the painting academy of a domestic paint manufacturer and distributor. The sponsoring company also supported his work with paints and tools.
"I practiced from morning till night, and when the competition was approaching, I had practice to work on time, so I had to schedule every second," he says.
While preparing for the competition this year, he even had to complete the graduate exams at his high school – for which he studied over the weekends, because of the tight work schedule. He took the tests in Mohács on Saturday, and on Sunday, he left for the Championship.
"I didn't want to believe it"
A world competition like this is a huge stress, but not for Bálint. "I'm not the nervous type," he says, and it shows. Nevertheless, he has received mental preparation, and at the end of each working day, he talks through the difficulties with a psychologist. "They say 60 percent depends on how mentally strong you are at the competition," he says.
At the European Championships in Poland, the painting competitors had to work for a total of 18 hours spread over three days. On the first day, they started with wallpapering: they had to prepare four colours by blending and paint them on the sample board. On the second day, they were given an hour and a half for the speed task. The last day was left for the design task, the door painting, and a project of their choice. The latter was an antique tile painting. The design task was to paint a simplified replica of a building on the waterfront in Gdansk on the wall, which was the best for Bálint and luckily the one that scored the most points. In total, he scored 84 out of 100 points to come out first place.
He was the last to be called to the stage when the results were announced. "I couldn't believe it," he recalls the big moment.
A twenty-year-old Mr. Teacher
More than two months after the event, Bálint is getting used to seeing his name in the press more and more. Meanwhile, since November, he has not only been a European champion painter and decorative painter, but also an instructor, having been invited back to teach at his former school.
"It's a strange feeling because some students are older than me. It's difficult for them to call me 'teacher', but they do try (laughs). My goal is to help those who are truly interested in the profession, and I even give them special tuition. They shouldn't be pulled down by peers who are only in the class because they have to be," he explains.
From the technical school in Pécs, they also go to train young people in Transylvania. Bálint would like to start his own business in a few years and plans to apply to the University of Pécs to become an architect.
"I recently worked in an apartment where one wall was red and the other green. I made samples of marble glue and repainted the walls to match the colour scheme.
"In just a few days you can transform an apartment to make you feel like you're entering a completely different place," he says when I ask him why he thinks painting rooms is a beautiful profession.
"I'm grateful to my instructors, including Csaba Csáki, with whom I prepared for the competitions, and Péter Wensofszky, under whom I had an internship during my school years, he made me fall in love with the profession. Also, my family and all the people around me, because I owe this success to them," he adds.
(Csaba Csáki, a master interior painter and decorator, was nominated for the Prima Primissima Award in the Hungarian Education and Public Education category this year.)
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