Is it true that your family has a special bond with Cardinal Péter Erdő?

My mother was the nanny of Péter Erdő for two years, and as luck should have it: when she grew old and she was in the retirement home of the Order of Malta, they met again. At a celebration in the small chapel of the home, the Cardinal celebrated Mass, and the two of them reminisced about old times.

Did your mother play an important role in your decision to start drawing?

She always supported my ideas, she said that if I believed in something, it would come true sooner or later. This is true for my film The Last Supper, which I had to wait 40 years to make because I had submitted the project in 1978, but it was rejected because of the religious theme. In hindsight, I think it's better, because if I had been able to make it then, we would have had a much lower quality production with the technology of the time. Now, however, we have lived up to Leonardo's painting a little. I know from this that if something doesn't work, you shouldn't press it, because no matter what I dream up, Someone from above will write into my script anyway...

In your script, which included filmmaking as well as drawing from a very early age?

There were four of us brothers. We played sports, as there was no television or computer at that time, and we didn't sit isolated, glued to our phones either. My mother drew beautifully, she dyed scarves, she designed patterns on silk shawls, and she tie-dyed. She taught me too, because she saw my talent, paying for summer art camps, and drawing lessons. Animation wasn’t taught at any school back then yet, so through a friend I got into the Hungarian Film studio, Mafilm’s animation group, and set designers. Then in 1968, I was able to apply to the Pannonia Film Studio, where sixty of us applied, six were accepted and I got in. I started with the Gusztáv series, besides which we had other productions such as the Mézga Family and Dr. Bubo.

The internal animation academy allowed us to learn from the bests: Marcell Jankovics, József Nepp, Attila Dargay, and József Gémes. Since then, I have been to many studios all over the world, but I have never met so many talented creators with so many different styles!

You had to spend at least ten years in the field to be allowed to submit your own film project, and for me, the first one was The Stone (“A Kő”). I remember József Nepp pulling out his drawer and saying, here are 15-20 scripts, choose one. And I wanted to draw the whole world in those three minutes!

In the end, you amazed the world with your 1980 background animated piece "The Fly". Do I know correctly that it was inspired by a Pink Floyd song?

My colleagues and I were very much centered around music, and I was a big Pink Floyd fan, I felt it very fulfilling at the time. They were the first band in the world to use noises for their songs, adding effects to them that made the genre new. I was inspired by a song from their album Ummagumma, in which a fly flies into a building and they chase it. The film flashed before my eyes immediately. Until then, all animations were made with characters jumping around in front of the background, playing the story for us. I wanted to come up with something new, because our masters had already done everything, and there was no way to top that. I had the idea of putting the camera in the eye of the fly so that we couldn't see the fly or the person chasing it, just the background. This was done by drawing a picture, but as the camera moved away, everything had to be drawn again, so we made over 3,600 drawings. Two ladies and I worked on it for two years.

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A drawing for the animated film "The Fly"

Watching the film, I wonder a bit how it passed the socialist censorship back then...

It was very fortunate that Elemér Hankiss upported me all the way in Pannonia Film Studio, because it's true: questions came from above about who was the fly and who was the chaser. It wasn't like today, where you put forward an idea and no questions are asked. But it involved the feeling that we didn’t stand a chance and we’d get hit on if we buzzed too much.

It was indeed a miracle that the film was finally approved, but within a good six months, it won every festival and was in the top three at the Oscar nominations.

And at that time, in addition to professional innovations, they also paid special attention to the message that the competitors from Eastrealizeope were bringing.

When did you start to realise that your idea of background animation was a big one on a global scale?

We were invited to the Ottawa festival, we went there, and I had never seen a screen the size of that in my life! The Corvin and Alfa cinema’s screen in Budapest were the biggest I had seen before that. The people whose films were screened that day sat in the front row, the filmmaker stood up at the end and the audience applauded or expressed their displeasure. When my film started, there was a mad roar, a booing, we were convinced we had failed. I didn't know at the time that this was a sign of approval among young people in Canada. At the end of the film, I stood up, the lights came on me and an older gentleman about six feet tall stood up next to me. He put his arm around me and congratulated me, saying that it was fantastic! It was Bill Littlejohn, the legendary animator from Walt Disney, whose film was screened after ours, and he knew right away, what I didn't, that I had made a huge professional innovation. He inv,ited me to Los Angeles, drove me around the city and showed me everything.

But you could not go and receive the Oscar Award in person...

Because comrade Dósai from Hungarofilm went there instead of me and was handed the award, although I was of course invited to the event, but didn't get a passport. The reason given was that I had no chance against the two Canadian candidates. But a delegation of several people went, and the next morning at eight o'clock I heard on Radio Free Europe that 'The Fly' had won an Oscar. It was shocking!

Of course, it would have been quite different to be able to sit there when the envelope was ripped open, it wasn't easy to process that instead of all that I was at home lying in bed and waking up hardly believing my ears.

The Hungarian Radio announced it only in the afternoon, and I was allowed to go out two months later to collect the statue, which was taken back from Comrade Dósai later that evening. Because Littlejohn had told them that he knew me, and I couldn't have changed that much in six months, so someone else went out on stage on my behalf. Of course, this immediately became a story in the media there. If I said to a young person today, you've been nominated, but I'll bring the award home, I think they wouldn’t hide their opinion…

How much has the Oscar Award changed your life?

When I went to collect the statue later, I was confronted with how business works out there. Littlejohn hosted me in fantastic conditions, and his first question was what I had in my suitcase. I said, well what should I? A tennis racket, because we were both tennis freaks. He asked me where the original drawings were. I said,  well that would have been quite a load, I couldn't even lift it, how could I have taken them? He said, "You could have signed them at a gallery on Sunset Boulevard, and if we sold each one for $50, you'd have the money for your next movie!” But they also wanted me to do commercials, saying my name would sell to 15 countries as an Oscar winner. I realised that the Oscar Award didn't bring in money directly, but it brought opportunity: it opened doors and could multiply my salary.

In the 1980s, you left Hungary not for the USA, but first for Germany and then Canada. Why?

On the one hand, President Reagan tightened the rules, and people from Eastern Europe were not given a green card, and I couldn't risk it without one. On the other hand, I had a plan at home, a feature film called The Rabbi's Cat (“A rabbi macskája”). However, the script was rejected, as was Erich Kästner's The 35th of May, which we also submitted. So I went out to Germany under a contract with the Concert Office as an artist of intellectual products, with a work permit. After three and a half years, I accepted an invitation to Canada to work for Nelvana, the biggest animation studio there. They worked with today's 3D tecrealized which I regretted at first, but then I realised it was the future.

After two years I started my own studio and worked everywhere from Toronto to Chicago and Los Angeles. Then in 2000 I came home by accident.

By accident?

My marriage broke up after 30 years because my wife never felt at home there and returned to Hungary, but the opportunity for professional development kept me there. I returned home because of my current wife, Zsófia, who is a ceramicist, and founded the Buda Drawing School with two of her former classmates. I would recommend to all young people to go abroatheirr a couple of years and then return and put your knowledge to good use. I have my roots here, as a lawyer friend of mine in Canada said: I will never be a Canadian because it wasn’t there I went to school or met my first girlfriend, I didn't get caught by the police there and it wasn’t there I got drunk for the first time in my life. At home, I picked up where I left off, and my colleagues and I understand each other and finish each other’s sentences. Unfortunately, I am limited physically by an illness, but I can sit and draw at my desk, my hands and brain work.

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A frame from the animated film "The Last Supper" by Ferenc Rófusz

Is what you have achieved as much appreciated now at home as it was appreciated abroad?

Hungarians used to have a kind of envy, they were very quick to judge. When I left, many of them thought I was a traitor, and it never occurred to them that I wasn't doing it for the money. Today, this attitude has changed, as can be seen from the fact that I have been awarded the title of Artist of the Nation, the Order of St. Stephen or the recent CineFest Lifetime Achievement Award. Of course, you get frightened of age when you receive a lifetime achievement award, but it is still a joy because it is given by the profession.

I managed to leave something behind, which is the goal of every artist, and this feedback is very good doping at the age of 76.

Do you think if we watch your films we will get to know your personality?

It's a good question. I go to high schools to give career advice, and there the students are uninhibited in saying what they think. The other day, one of them stood up and said, with due respect, they'd seen my films, and although I seem to be a humorous, cheerful person in real life, how come in all my films the main character dies... And everyone fell silent, including me. Oh my God, I thought, how right he is! It seems that what's hidden deep inside you comes out somehow. I made the "Ticket", also a background animation film, in 2011 at the urging of my eldest son. It's about how everyone gets a ticket for life, not knowing how many stops, what class of train, or when to get off. The film spins through a lifetime, and at the end the protagonist is buried, of course. And in this film, I had drawn the walker, the IV and the wheelchair, even though I could still play tennis for six hours at that time. I drew my own future, because now, as long as I live, I have to go to St John's Hospital every five weeks for an infusion to slow the deterioration in my mobility. Am I right in thinking that Someone from above keeps writing into my scripts?

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Photo: Tibor Vermes

What you say is thought-provoking, as are your films. Why is it important for you to make an animated adaptation of Hieronymus Bosch's triptych "The Garden of Earthly Delights"?

Because I feel it's very current, even though Bosch painted it 500 years ago, when Leonardo's mural "The Last Supper" was painted.

Today, people are morally bankrupt, they should be shaken up and confronted with this. I would show my vision of this work of art, by bringing the 21st century into it.

Last year we made a two-minute trailer of "The Hell" panel, in which we brought in airplanes with sound effects, even though there was no war yet at that time (visitors to the Bosch exhibition in the Museum of Fine Arts could see this - ed.) But we can also be modern just by using a flash because 500 years ago there was no flash either. This animation is at least a year and a half or two years' work for five or six people, and as time is passing, it could be my last challenge, I want to make it permanent. There is also an idea for this and for The Last Supper, that wherever the painting will be exhibited, this animation film would be projected in the lobby, translated into five languages, so that people could go in and see Leonardo's work, or Bosch's after they’ve seen the animation of them. They would surely leave with an even deeper understanding, even maybe taking the film with them on a USB stick. Because Leonardo once had to say what he wanted to say in a single image, whereas we have 11 minutes to do so.

“Hiring a decent boy for apprentice ”

Kopcsik Lajos’s father was a miner but played the accordion beautifully and one of his friends played the violin and the two of them often played together. These childhood memories made music a part of Lajos’s life. Whenever he was working on a piece of art, he always listened to the music of Bach, Vivaldi or Mozart. Besides music, he was very fond of visual arts. ”Both of my hobbies help me in my work: loving music fills my heart and soul with joy, and loving visual arts helps my eyesight in my work” – he said.

One day this weak, and ailing boy was walking on the Main Street of his hometown, Sajószentpéter with his mother when they saw a note in the store window of Pál  Schmida master confectioner saying: “Hiring decent boy for apprentice”.

His mother told him right away to apply saying he could even get a bit stronger from eating lots of cakes. This is how at the age of 14 he started his career in the trade and fell in love with it. He was proud of his long white apron and he watched in awe how Pali bácsi filled 8-10 cakes simultaneously with cream. Not long afterwards however the door of the store got walled up and the master’s business license was withdrawn, and the apprentice boy had to go and work for the Borsod Vendéglátó Vállalat (‘Borsod Catering Company’) of which he later became manager. He did his internship in the capital, where he worked with Mátyás Szamos, among others. Since the age of 19, he has participated in national and international professional competitions, where his work has always been awarded a gold medal. At the age of 20, he married Margit Bencs, who also worked as a confectioner, and became his loyal companion and his stable background that allowed his talent to flourish.

Matryoshka dolls with onion-domed temples on their bodies

In 1988, he won a gold medal and an Oscar Award for confectionary as a member of the Hungarian national team at the Frankfurt Baking Olympics. In the same year, he moved to Eger, where he managed, among other things, the Kopcsik confectionery. Here he created vibrant cultural life with exhibitions and artists invited for coffee. After many years, it was here that through work he met István Herczeg, a painter and graphic artist who was from the same region of Hungary, too. The creative confectioner turned to pastry artistry when he was a teacher at the Vocational Training School for Catering in Eger. He was asked to chair the jury of a professional competition, where he took ten pieces of his work to be exhibited.

Immediately he was entered into the Berlin Olympics, where he won ten gold medals at one go and this got him into the Guinness Book of World Records.

"An entrepreneur who had opened the Eszterházy confectionery in Moscow, recognised the opportunity and in 1996 gave us the assignment to create a pastry artistry decoration," recalls the artist friend. - "We started thinking about what we could make out of sugar. We decided on the matryoshka doll, and I painted onion-domed Russian churches on the dolls' bodies." Also a world record was the three-and-a-half square metre sugar mural in the Offi House in Eger, designed and painted by István Herczeg in the style of miniatures found in the Topkapi Serai in Istanbul, in memory of the Turkish times in Eger. "We also invented a technique that made the artwork look like an icon. The night before the solution was born, we drank two bottles of champagne." And 15 years of working together, brainstorming and humour passed like this.

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Lajos Kopcsik and István Herczeg – Photo: Clara Teleki

Hard sugar dough, without almonds

The tragacanth, a sugar paste made of gelatine and icing sugar, became the basic ingredient, which the master developed further. As a decorative glaze, he used a mixture of egg white and sugar flour. The marzipan had to be left out because the high fat content of the almonds in the mixture makes it turn rancid. The sugar dough when dry is as hard as porcelain. It can be polished, which was the job of Sándor Sebők, the world's only master sugar polisher. Then came the artistic work of István Herczeg, who painted with tempera paint or precisely sketched the design. "I dealt with the three-dimensional pieces by painting, but I drew the flat shapes precisely. We put the colouring material in cellophane, like what you do when you decorate gingerbread, and whatever I designed, Lajos would sprinkle it on," says the graphic artist.

Dried, hard sugar dough is fragile, so for competitions, usually, two of each pieces of art were made.

"Lajos used to mould the sugar on styrofoam because raw sugar alone would not have held. The inner styrofoam at least held the mould until it dried. This is how the bell was made, for example."

 ”Pistike, what shall we do?”

With István Herczeg, we walk through the rooms of Marcipánia (‘Marzipan Land’), the former bell foundry, although the name can be a bit misleading, as marzipan had to be left out of the works of art that were meant to be permanent. István tells a story for each piece and chuckles good-naturedly at the memories he recalls. The brainstorming often started with a question: "Pistike, what shall we do?" (“Pistike” is a nickname for István) This is how the world's largest sugar stamp, the sugar version of the special stamp for Children's Day designed by artist friend János Kass, was created. Among the 120 objects, we find a two-metre-high wine bottle, the Minaret, a Vasarely reproduction, a Monet painting for the exhibition of the Museum of Fine Arts and Van Gogh's famous sunflowers, with every brushstroke precisely captured.

The pair was also inspired by the memory of Gárdonyi: of sugar dough, they created his chair, on which he sat to write the Eger Stars, and a portrait of him with a pipe.

"We feel a personal attachment to each piece," says the co-artist. - "Lajos's grandson loved the cartoon figure, the Little Mole, so we made one, as we made others, like Vuk, Nils Holgersson and Lúdas Matyi. In the latter, I also included a real cep, next to the fly agaric that is common in storybooks." A chess set was also made at the request of a chess player.

The more absurd the idea, the more attractive

"My wife once suggested that we make a funnel gramophone. Lajos thought it was an absurd idea, but in the end, it haunted him and he made two pieces: one for Moscow and one for Eger. A sculptor friend of mine, Sándor Sebestyén, sculpted a small bronze statue, the Trout Quintet, using the wax-casting bronze technique. We used this idea to create a record composition with five swimming trout. I have also hidden personal thoughts on it, such as "conducted by Lajos Kopcsik". People often don't even notice this kind of humour."

  "Pistike, let's do a folk art thing!" - the master confectioner once asked. István designed a palette of Hungary's most famous ethnographic regions. "Both of us had an educational intention to try to steer people in the right direction with our work." 

"There was only one suggestion to which Lajos Kopcsik at first not only said no but asked me directly: "Pistike, do you want to kill me?" Each frame of the Ravenna mosaic had to be coloured separately, in shades. For three years, he was torn before he decided to do it. It was a serious professional challenge."

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Matryoshka dolls in Marcipánia

Baroque sugar room, guarded by a sugar dog

The Kopcsik Marcipánia opened in 2005, followed by three years of work, the master's long cherished dream, the Baroque room.

Everything here is made of sugar, except the mirror and the window glass. The floor, the wallpaper, the curtains, the chandelier, the impressive stove, the sofa, the tabla e with fruit, the violin with a bow.

The portraits of his grandchildren’s, as well as his wife’s and his own are on the wall. István also tells us how lifelike every inch of the Baroque room looks: “For the bone in front of the sugar dog that guards the room, we took a sample from the butcher, and when it was finished, I looked at Lajos to see if he was looking my way  and then smelled the bone to determine which was the real thing and which was the sugar.” One day the violin bow bent a bit, and that's when they discovered that the building had got a leak. The main enemy of sugar is moisture, so it took months of struggle to save the baroque wonder.

On one occasion, a Russian visitor had a craving for the showy sugar pastry and took a curious bite of the umbrella holder. Fortunately, it was not part of the exhibit, it was made of real metal. "Lajos was always cheerful and we had a lot of fun together, and in our circle of friends and acquaintances. He welcomed everyone. He also played a lot with his two grandchildren, and when they grew up he missed these moments of joy," says his friend.

Sometimes he even forgot to eat...

They created a travelling exhibition with István Herczeg, which was last exhibited on the occasion of the master's 80th birthday.

Lajos Kopcsik lived for his work and family.

Artwork brought him a lot of joy, although he hardly ever took a weekend or a break, sometimes forgetting to eat while he worked. When this way of life came to an end because of the lack of a workshop, the confectioner's soul was shattered. His loneliness as an artist was made even more profound at the time of the Covid pandemic. The artist, who left the mark of his hand and talent not only in Eger but also in Russia, Sweden and the USA, may now be moulding angels up there, to the live music of his favourites. Let us hope that the unique work of art created with István Herczeg will survive intact for a long time to the joy of the whole world and the pride of Hungarians.

Resourses:

• http://www.kopcsikmarcipania.hu/kopcsik-lajos/
• https://receptletoltes.hu/arch%C3%ADvum/11932?pdf=11932
• http://www.egri-magazin.hu/az-egesz-eletem-a-cukraszatrol-szolt-el-sem-tudtam-volna-mast-kepzelni/

When did you first feel the desire to become a monk?

My family was not very religious, but I have always been interested, even as a small child, in what we are doing here on earth, what the meaning of life is, and what is beyond this life on Earth. At school, I took up religious education classes as soon as I could, and there I finally got my questions answered, sometimes giving really hard times to the teachers. Later on, I started going to church and took my first communion. I was also called to be an altar boy, and I was honored because through that I could serve the God who made me. At the age of 14, I saw the film Francesco on TV, about the life of St Francis of Assisi, starring Mickey Rourke. I was so captivated by the saint's example that by the end of the film I had a burning desire to follow the Lord as he did. I began to watch the Franciscan monks in our church, comparing them to the characters in the film, and I was often disappointed. But this did not discourage me, it encouraged me to show how you really should follow Christ in the example of St Francis. I also made it clear that I would become a Franciscan monk, even if I was a bad child now.

Why? What kind of a child were you?

I knowingly did the wrong thing and manipulated the people around me. I always sensed people’s weaknesses and enjoyed having power over them. At school, I regularly made my sister and classmates do my homework for me.

I once organized the robbery of the chemistry equipment room. I got into a lot of fights with three or four kids at the same time. Even if I got beaten up, I felt like a hero, because in action movies the protagonists fight several enemies simultaneously.

I also deliberately made my teachers freak out, sabotaging their lessons. I was referred to the Principal’s office several times, I was always on the edge. When I felt I was about to be expelled, I applied to different academic competitions. I did well on them so I was allowed stay. I had two selves: a church-going one and an ordinary one. While I was in church, I acted like an angel. As soon as I left, I started to get rowdy, and on Sunday afternoon I was looting the nearby construction site. I also used to break into the nearby bus garage, where I stole phones and car radios, sold them, and used the money to buy throwing and butterfly knives. At the age of 14, I was arrested by the police, I got two years suspended for burglary. Despite all this, I still had the desire to be good and to serve God as a Franciscan friar. I thought I could change if I wanted to, but until then I still have time to try a couple of things. Then at college as a computer science major, all I could think of was having fun. I only studied what I was interested in, so after two years I dropped out. I started working for a real estate company, it was great, I enjoyed making good money. Then the recession came and I felt it was time for me to go. I went to England.

What about your other self during this period?

I had a very intense experience with God before graduation. My parents divorced when I was five. My mother worked multiple jobs throughout my childhood to support us. One day she came home and couldn't get up, work, or eat anymore. We had to darken the house completely because she couldn't stand the light or the noise. At that time I didn't know much about how serious an illness depression was, and I was busy with my own world. One day she disappeared, leaving a suicide note: she was very ashamed that she couldn't support us. She thought it would be better for us if she died because then we would get some orphans’ benefits. We looked for her all night with the parish priest and the kids from church, but we couldn't find her. The next day I got on my bike again, I had a strong feeling, and I went to a nearby park, where I suddenly saw my mother, battered, muddy all skin and bones.

She failed to commit suicide, she was so drugged up she couldn't slit her wrists. I dropped the bike, ran over, and hugged her.

Immediately, the story of the Prodigal Son came to my mind from the Bible: the merciful Father runs to his son, asks no questions just is glad that he’s alive. This encounter completely changed my image of God: the Father loves his child as he is, not only when he is good and obeys the rules.

Despite all this, in my early twenties, I slowly lost my faith, I no longer felt the presence of God as I had before. I continued to go to mass, to serve at the altar, but I felt a great bleakness and darkness inside, I fell into a deep depression, and I even contemplated suicide. I questioned the existence of God and even my own. I began to read Greek philosophers and the doctrines of other world religions. After much research, I realized that the truth was somewhere in the Catholic Church and that God must exist. But at that time I had not yet regained my faith, but I wanted to believe. I often retreated into nature for reflection, and there I experienced once again the infinite love of God, which lifted me out of the pit, and the idea of monasticism came back to me. I went to England not only for the adventure and to learn a language but to clarify this question for myself.

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Photo: Botond DH

What did you find out in England?

Even though I was making a lot of money as a waiter in a five-star hotel and could afford the most high-tech electronic devices, designer clothes, or perfume, all of these only gave me pleasure for a couple of hours, I couldn't find my place. I felt a growing desire to give myself completely to God.

I gave my notice in the spring, even though I was up for promotion and a pay rise, and contacted the Franciscans to start my postulancy program in September.

In the summer I came home to fulfill some of my dreams before I entered the order, and the following were on my list: laser eye surgery, military survival camp, tandem skydiving jump, and rock climbing course. For reasons beyond my control, I ended up doing only the last one. In the meantime, I found out that my application had been mislaid, so I would only be expected the following year – I was informed about all these by a pastoral counselor. I was outraged that I had wound up my entire life, moved back home, and was not even being received by the Provincial Minister. I sneaked into the library of the monastery in Zalaegerszeg and found the phone number of the provincial at the time, called him and I ended up having a very serious argument with him. Several people must have interceded on my behalf because at the end of the summer he called me to say that I could go from September. But I said I was not to be tossed around as that and I had already planned to go back to England and come back next year. We made a deal: I would go to serve with Father Balázs Barsi in Sümeg for a few months to prove that I was serious about the monastic life, and only then would I go back to England. Later my mother fell into a deep depression again, so I came home earlier to take over her care from my sister. Again I asked the provincial governor for a postponement, although this time for only two months but he did not grant it. So I had to wait another year. After my mother got better, I went to work for the telephone company ‘Telekom’. When I gave notice saying that I was going to be a monk, they were shocked, they had never seen anyone quit for such a reason.

How did you manage to get rid of your old self?

Once I started my postulancy program, I was very disappointed in myself. I had to realize that the faults I had previously discovered in Franciscan friars were also present in me and that I was very far from my Franciscan ideal. I often vexed and humiliated my fellow postulant, who irritated me a lot. I found it difficult to obey, to ask permission or money for anything. I was annoyed that someone else was scheduling my day, so I cheated the system wherever I could. For example, I once ordered a very expensive coat from my old bank account in England. I timed the delivery so that my counselor would not be there when it arrived. At the end of my postulancy, I asked myself if it was a good idea for me to be there, or if I was not dishonoring the Franciscans. I began my probationary year with the hope that I might change. In that year of silence, completely cut off from the world - no TV, no phone, no internet, no contact with my family except by letter - I managed to cleanse myself of my past. I realized that I could not change by my own strength, as I had always wanted to, but only by letting God into my life because only He could transform me.

I literally experienced God taking my heart of stone and giving me a heart of flesh instead.

Did you have any temptations after that?

Once I started to live according to my vows every day, I realized how many things I had to give up. In my first year as a novice, I fell in love with a girl in our church in Pasarét. I didn't tell anyone, I just prayed a lot, and I had the deep, reassuring realization that my heart still belongs to God above all else. I told the girl that we should never meet again because my calling was to be a monk, even though I had fallen in love. Then came the painful realization that I would never have children of my own.

Instead of your own, you got hundreds of other kids. For years, you were the leader of the altar boys and the church’s youth groups in Pasarét, and recently you were appointed pastoral director of the St. Angela's School. Whenever I see you, there are always two-three kids around you.

I feel like God put a magnet inside me to attract them. When I go down to the school canteen, the children shout and run to me, clinging to me. The teachers try to discipline them, but I just goof around and laugh with them. Being a rebel myself, I can easily understand them, even the difficult ones. When I take them on a weekend trip, I feel like a family man. I feel it is God’s grace that I have so many children around me and I am grateful to Him that I can convey so much good despite my past and my weaknesses.

It is also important in today's society, which suffers from the lack of male role models, for the kids to see men who are committed to someone or something because today's young people find it difficult to do so and even harder to stick with it.

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Photo: Barnabás Moldoványi

As a rebel, do you still find it difficult to obey?

I have completely settled into the monastic life, I do my best to live this life as nicely and well as possible, that's why I took my final vows two years ago. We follow St. Francis’s concept that we can do whatever we want to as long as we serve the Gospel, so thus we can all be fulfilled. I can do the things that interest me, organize pyrotechnics shows, and flash mobs, take the kids on excursions, and play laser tag, or go-kart. My fellow friars always teas me that I organize these activities for myself. My rebellion today is mostly against mainstream thinking. While others desire power, position, or wealth, and while everything is about sex, I choose purity, poverty, and obedience of my own free will.

Why do you think your path has been so difficult?

Maybe others would have given up sooner, but that's what motivated me. But it's not necessarily easier for someone who applies straight after graduation and gets accepted into the order. I have the advantage of being familiar with what the world is like, I've done a variety of jobs, I know the weight of money and I know how to budget. But to grow into monastic life, I had to become a child again, to learn what it is like to rely on God rather than on the strength I thought I had.

Do you remember the moment when you first realized that you were different from other children?

I don’t remember a definite moment. I'm sure I've been stared at, criticized, or made feel different, but I forget the bad things very quickly. My parents did everything they could to make me live a life like any other child. Even though they were advised to enroll me in a primary school for the physically disabled, they chose not to. I went to an integrated foundation school, the Children's House. Here I was given the opportunity to learn in a safe environment, but still not in a closed world. I went to high school in a Catholic institution.

Both my parents and my schools have helped me not to see myself as an eccentric, and to accept that there are things I am different in, or I function differently from other people.

Did having to use your feet instead of your hands cause you difficulties as a child?

From a very young age, it was natural for me to use my feet for everything, which is how I developed the fine motor skills of my toes. I can actually do everything with my feet, the most difficult thing is carrying things, but I always have someone to ask for help.

You can even drive with your feet.

It was my dream to drive. First I had to convince my parents, then I had to figure out how to make it happen. This required both my technical and English skills, as I started by browsing English-language sites on the internet about driving with my feet. On a holiday in Rome, I fell so much in love with the Fiat 500 that later, when I bought a car with the support of my family, I chose this model in snow-white with automatic transmission. A mechanic friend helped me to convert it. I steer with my right foot and operate the pedals with my left. I control the indicator with my head, it's attached to the headrest.

I've had people look at me bewildered from the bus next to me at red lights, but I don't think you can really see from the outside how I drive, and other drivers don't really notice that I wave with my foot when I let someone in the row in front of me.

Speaking of your technical knowledge, you graduated as a transport engineer. Why did you choose this profession?

I've always been attracted to technical things, and I did well in science, so there was no question about which direction I would go in. And I chose transport engineering because of my passion for aviation, with a particular interest in traffic management. After I graduated, I worked in this field for a short time, doing administrative tasks related to aircraft maintenance. But it soon became clear that this was not the job I really wanted, and I could not really develop. My life then took a completely different turn: for a year and a half I worked as an assistant event organizer on the preparation and implementation of the International Eucharistic Congress. Then I returned to transport, started my training as a rehabilitation environmental designer, and got a job as an accessibility officer at the Center for Budapest Transport. I've only been working here for a month, but I'm really enjoying it.

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Borbála and her service dog – Photo: Júlia Ernyey-Balogh

What you set your mind to, you put into practice, while striving for complete independence. Why is this important to you?

In many situations I need help, sometimes it's just more convenient or quicker to do something with help, but I don't want to be dependent on others all the time. While I was living at home, it was obvious that my parents would help me once they were there, but this also creates a dependency.

How did you become independent of your parents?

The first big step towards independence was an Erasmus scholarship to Warsaw. There I lived on my own for the first time. A girl came to help me once a week, otherwise, I did everything myself.

That semester was a real challenge but also a test of my ability to live independently.

I moved out from home after university when I started working. My parents come over once a week for a couple of hours, and I need help mostly with grocery shopping and household chores. I can clean up on my own, but it's much more time-consuming and tiring. Otherwise, my flat is designed so that everything I need on a daily basis is within easy reach and convenient.

Soon you will have new opportunities because you’ll have a helper dog. Where did you get the idea?

A friend of mine, Júlia Ernyey-Balogh, who trains assistance dogs, once asked me what I would say to a dog. The idea immediately appealed to me, because I had a dog as a child and I always wanted another one, but I couldn't imagine keeping one on my own. In the summer they chose the best one for me: Lira, the Portuguese Water Dog. There is a long list of things she needs to learn to become a service dog. When Juli feels the time is right, she will come to me, and together we will prepare for the exam for assistance dogs. Until then, I meet with Lira every week, get to know her, play with her and practice the exercises with her. I'm looking forward to having her not only because she'll help me with lots of things, turning off the lights, carrying my bag, fetching things, opening the door, etc., but also because I'll have a companion and I won't be alone. I'll definitely be going for a lot more walks, and going out with her.

You are involved in several disability projects. How did you become an activist?

When I was in high school or university, I was studying, and living the life of young people of my age. I sometimes asked myself whether I should be specifically involved in disability issues, but I didn't really think about it. Then, one by one, the different projects found me. One of them is Freekey, in whose campaigns I have been involved. The aim is to implement a personal assistance service in Hungary - which is already operating abroad - and we would like to draw the attention of decision-makers to this. There are many people with disabilities who need help, some for just a few hours a week, others on a daily basis.

Personal assistance would mean independence for these people, independence from relatives and institutions because the helper would go when the person wants them to, help them with what they want help with and they’d be able even to choose the helper.

I know someone with a disability who goes out with a helper. The other project I'm involved in is Nő az erőnk (” Woman is our strength” but also means “Our strength is growing”). This started with an online training where we worked in small groups. One of the tasks was to plan a campaign, our topic was women with disabilities. After the training, my partners and I, one of whom is also disabled, decided to implement it. On 8 March, we organized an online event for Women with Disabilities Day. It has been such a success that we have since submitted an Erasmus+ youth application to organize a workshop and joint photo shoot for disabled and non-disabled women, and we will also organize an exhibition of the photos. Our aim is to empower women with disabilities, make them visible and raise awareness of the problems they face. When people look at us, they should not see the disability first, but the woman!

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Photo: Kriszta Lettner

In mid-September, you spoke and confessed your faith in front of three thousand young people at the Forráspont event. What did that give you?

It was a huge experience, I tried to ignore the fact that I was speaking in front of so many people. I've never felt qualified to give a motivational speech and was surprised when I was asked. I prefer to motivate others with my actions, with my life. People with disabilities to be open to a joyful life and other people to be accepting. Don't look down on us, get to know us, and see that it is possible to live a full life with disabilities, too! I may not have received something from God, but I have received many other things, which I try to manage well and use for the benefit of others.

Lost his love in the war

The Nobel Prize winner for Literature, John Steinbeck, said of him, "He could photograph motion and gaiety and heartbreak. He could photograph thought." But Capa was a friend not only of this literary genius but also of another one, Ernest Hemingway, as well as Pablo Picasso and Ingrid Bergman was his love. He managed to condense an incredible amount of human encounters, inhuman moments, creativity, emotion, and drama into 41 years, and he did not take them with him to his grave but left them to posterity in the photographs he made.

Born in 1913, his father was a dressmaker, he wanted to become a writer, but he was captivated by photography and eventually stayed with that. In fact, it was his first love that laid the foundations for his "eternal love", as he began to learn his photography following Éva Besnyő, who would later become an internationally renowned photographer.

Éva later recalled that she also played a big role in choosing the legendary artist's name: "We called him Cápa („Shark”) at home and his brother Kornél Krokodil (“Crocodile”)" she said - but others say otherwise.

Endre moved to Germany in 1931 and enrolled at the German Political College in Berlin to study journalism. The background to this was that he had sympathized with the illegal Communist Party in Hungary, which had led to trouble with the police, so his parents thought it better to continue his studies abroad. Berlin in the 1930s, however, did not bode well for him as a Jew, although he did achieve his first successes: he joined the Dephot photo agency and produced a memorable series of photographs of Trotsky's visit to Denmark.

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Éva Besnyő in 1931 – Photo: Wikipedia

In 1933 he went to Vienna, then temporarily back to Pest, where he worked in a photographer's shop, taking photographs for tourist publications. His next stop was Paris, where he worked for photo magazines and met Gerda Taro, who defined his life in the future.

They lived in the artistic and bustling Montparnasse district, and it was then that the name Robert Capa was born: the most likely version is that Gerda had the idea, based on the names of Endre's photographic idols Robert Taylor and Frank Capra. A fictional character was also invented behind the new name inspired by the first name of one of them and the surname of the other: Capa was a wealthy American photographer who sold his own work at high prices.

In 1936, a tragedy brought a new turn in Capa's - no longer Endre - life: while working for Vu magazine, he and his partner travelled to Spain with the assignment to take a series of photographs of the civil war, but Gerda was run over and killed by a tank. Before the sad incident, Capa had made his later world-famous photograph, The Falling Soldier, which shows a man collapsing at the moment of his death.

Some accused him of the photograph being staged - successful people had their enviers back then too.

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Gerda Taro – Photo: Wikipedia

He became a legend in photography as an American

Of course, Capa had a tendency to add some colour to the stories afterward, not in a photographic sense, but to make what he experienced on the spot sound more thrilling. His creativity was evident in this, too. Gerda's death broke his heart, and after a detour to the Far East - the Japanese-Chinese war - he moved to America at the invitation of Life magazine.

His mother and younger brother were already living there, but his friendship with Hemingway may have played a part in his being accepted to the US coming from a country at war with the US during the Second World War. The two became lifelong friends during the Spanish Civil War, and Hemingway used Capa's experiences at the Navacerrada Pass to write his iconic work For Whom the Bell Tolls. Capa later made a famous series of pictures of Hemingway's family.

The photographer was the only one arriving from an enemy country who became accredited by the US Army, so he was able to take photographs from the front line during the war. In his autobiography, he writes that he was asked by Collier's American magazine, which wanted him to report from England, to leave New York despite the laws forbidding him to do so. "I only had a nickel in my pocket. I decided to flip it. If I had a head, I'd go for it and even kill to get to England," he recalled the moment. It was tails, but Capa, who fancied himself a gambler, set off.

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China, 1938 – Photo: Wikipedia

While drinking some alcohol in a bar in Washington, the British press attaché found the legal loophole that allowed him to board a boat. They let him do it because he was already Picture Post's picture editor, "the world's greatest war photographer", as was written under one of his published pictures. The photographer earned this accolade by documenting the human face of the battle rather than the bloody action. Capa's lens was always looking for the eyes and glances of the participants, for their momentary feelings and dramas. He did so when he was reporting from North Africa as a war correspondent for the Allies, or even when he was photographing from the air as the paratroopers landed in Sicily, falling with the ejected soldiers.

He even helped untangle the parachute cord of one of them, saving his life. He developed the photos at the light of a cigarette because for him there was no such thing as impossible.

He photographed a famous series of funerals of teenage partisans killed in guerrilla fights against the Germans in Naples. He photographed the D-Day landing from close quarters by hiding behind a wrecked military boat in the water and then swimming to shore with his camera among the bodies. From there, he had to take a boat, which he used to get to the base ship, on the bloody water, amid the feathers of the shot soldiers' jackets flying in the air. On the ship, he photographed the stretchers and then fainted. The development of the films was botched in the lab and most of the pictures were destroyed.

He himself considered the photograph of his life to be the one he took in Chartres in August 1944, entitled The Shaved Woman of Chartres of a French woman, with her hair shaved off marching among the mockers with a baby born to a German soldier in her arms. But Capa was everywhere during the years of the war, from bombed-out London to liberated Paris and falling Berlin. After the war, he became an American citizen.

He seduced an actress, but his work became his fate

In 1945, he returned to Paris, where he fell in love with Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman, whom he followed to Hollywood, where they lived together for two years. The actress was married and was ready to leave her husband for Capa, but the photographer refused to commit. Instead, in 1947, he and his fellow photographers, such greats as Henri Cartier-Bresson and William Vandivert, founded Magnum Photos, named after the champagne they drank when they founded it. It was the first cooperative agency of international freelance photographers, and Capa was finally able to photograph civilian life.

He and John Steinbeck were the first American correspondents to travel to the Soviet Union beyond the Iron Curtain, and Steinbeck published a book about the trip, entitled A Russian Journal, richly illustrated with Capa's photographs.

The photographer then took thousands of pictures of the everyday life of the Russian people, with whom he also felt a kind of spiritual community, and because he made no secret of this, he was put on the US list of "suspected communists".

In 1948, Capa spent six weeks in Hungary, where he captured everyday life in Budapest and in the country's rural towns as the country awoke from the war and was under communist takeover. He was present during the Israeli War of Independence and saw Ben Gurion proclaim the founding of Israel. After that, he led a more peaceful life, photographing European ski resorts, beaches, and horse racing for Holiday magazine, and also doing a series on Picasso and his family in France.

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China, 1938 – Photo: Wikipedia

But his peace soon ended: his American passport was finally revoked on the grounds that he was a communist, and he tried to defend himself from Paris through his lawyer, while all his money ran out. In vain, he said, “War is like an aging actress - more and more dangerous and less and less photogenic”, he had to undertake another mission to make a living. In 1954, at the age of 41, he was commissioned by a Japanese publisher to travel to the country to photograph children and was asked by Life magazine to cover the French colonial war while he was there. He didn't want to do that, he had a bad feeling about it.

In Hanoi, Vietnam, on 25 May, he boarded a military jeep and, after photographing soldiers preparing to deploy across the Red River, stepped on a landmine on the battlefield and was so badly injured that by the time he was found, he was beyond help. His own belief was that "if your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough", but in this case, he was not only close enough to death, it had taken him.

His friend, the editor John G. Morris, said of him that he had always "believed in the brotherhood of man, and had a passionate desire for peace". And on the second day after his funeral, the photographer André Kertész dedicated a picture of a New York City twilight from a window to his memory, Homage to Robert Capa.

Literature:

• https://www.theartstory.org/artist/capa-robert/
• https://totallyhistory.com/robert-capa/
• https://www.famousphotographers.net/robert-capa
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Capa
• https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Robert_Capa
• https://www.ujakropolisz.hu/cikk/robert-capa-haditudositas-emberseg-nagykovete

Twice in my life, I have thought about how our relationship with our hair is a reflection of our state of mind. I had to spend a few weeks in a psychiatric hospital after a major loss. The first time I walked past the nurses' room to the shower, shampoo in hand, the nurses nodded at me with a smile. I felt I had made a big breakthrough. The second time I had the same experience as a help-line worker, only this time from the other side, the helping side. The moment I was sure that the lady on the other end of the line wasn't going to commit suicide that night was when I managed to talk her into a hair wash. Nobody with beautiful, freshly washed hair commits suicide...

Neglected hair can indicate a gloomy state of mind. However, a pretty hairstyle can help you see the world as hopeful again.

- Gábor, where did the idea come from? Is there a philosophy behind it similar to mine?

- It all started during the economic crisis of 2008. The way the economy suddenly collapsed, families were going down, losing their homes... I thought I had to help people, but as my financial means were not very good either, I helped in the best way I could: with my work. One of my colleagues at the time had lost his job. He had two unemployed adults and two teenage children in his family. I made a red, custom bob hairstyle for his wife. That's my philosophy.

- Since then, it's become part of your life that every weekend you load your hairdressing equipment into your car and drive to unheated farms, to mothers' homes, sick people... Remember the day you decided that from now on your scissors would be the tool you would use to help others?

- I remember coming home from work on a Friday night, but I don’t remember the year. The following week I approached a lot of local organizations with my idea. Unfortunately, these big charities, the Red Cross, and Charitas operate very difficultly compared to my little venture, so I made a social media page instead and started from there.

All I do is simply give a free haircut to people who can't afford to pay for it. Or for those whose health doesn't allow them to go out.

Usually, I only do cuts, but if I have the time and I can get dye and tools, I can do whatever they wish. I don't need a big organization behind me, people in need can find me anyway.

- There is not a single photo of you on your page, you only share pictures of your haircuts.

- The whole thing is very simple. My name is Gábor Horváth. I was born in Szombathely, and I've been living here ever since. I'm 39 years old, and I am a qualified hairdresser, but never entered the beauty industry. I chose this career under family pressure. At the time, it seemed that taking over my uncle's hairdressing business would provide a secure livelihood. It turned out differently, I didn't get the business, and I had to look for another career. For a while, I worked in my father's garage, but we had to admit that the tiny workshop couldn't support the wages of two people, so I ended up working for a local multinational company. At first, I was a laborer, later I was allowed to operate machines, and then I was allowed to work independently. After a few years and a few courses, I was able to work as a machine setter. Since then, I have moved up the ladder, working in quality assurance. In the meantime, I started a family and became a husband and a father. I also hung up my racing helmet and overalls. With a childhood friend, I spent ten wonderful years in the Hungarian rally scene.

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Some of Gábor's hairdos – Photo: Hajvágás Ingyen

- How do you decide whether to say yes or no to a request?

- The first few sentences tell me everything. Whether the person is really in need or just trying to save a few thousand forints. The profiles on social media sites are also telling, and there's always someone you know who knows the person and you can ask. I have had to learn to say no, I found myself in trouble because of this on several occasions. There were times when I was at the house already and decided to turn back. But in most cases, it is really those who live in difficult circumstances who find me.

- What does a program like this look like, where do you go?

- I go to people’s homes, that's the rule. My privacy is inviolable, as is my home. We make appointments, if I go out of town, I usually put those who live close to each other on the same day. I need freshly washed hair and a chair... If there's electricity, I'm happy, but if not, that's fine too. It doesn't bother me if the building is dilapidated if there is no running water if it lacks anything else that others take for granted.

This is when human lives are revealed when the real conditions of those at the bottom of society become apparent.

I had a guest called Vera, who unfortunately is no longer with us, she lived 150 kilometers away. She was living in difficult circumstances, losing her son and then her husband. She rented a tiny council flat, and in winter she often had no heating, she was starving. I brought her food and clothes on several occasions, her hair was falling out quite badly and I managed to fix it. There were always tears when I showed her freshly cut hair in the mirror. She died in February this year when she has just started to recover. She started to have a relationship, she got a job. She didn't call for weeks, I found out from her cousin that she died. Pulmonary embolism.

- Do you have a guest you return to?

- Fortunately, I am invited back to many places. My waiting list can be several months, and often they book the next appointment before the hairdo is done. However, there are always empty days, which I save for unexpected situations, weddings, or deaths. And these are the days when I go to families with sick or disabled children, or to abused women who are not easily accessible at any time, residents of mothers' and children's homes, and I also reserve appointments for hairstyles that I would love to do but haven't had the chance to do yet.

- Which story has left the deepest impression on you?

- I was contacted years ago by a disabled lady who was a single mom, raising her son alone after the death of her husband. We became friends almost.

- You have come into contact with a lot of people over the years.

- Thanks to my connections, we were able to bring an old friend of mine and her few-month-old son from Ukraine to Hungary in March this year to escape the war. The whole story was a cooperation of a lot of people, it wasn’t just me. My wife took the money from our family savings to pay the Ukrainian border guard to let our guests through without a passport. I also owe thanks to my workplace, which paid for most of the donations that were sent there, to my colleagues who all gave something from their little, and to my friend who runs the car hire company that gave us the van (even though he knew where we were going). Thanks also go to friends in the health sector who gave us the medical equipment.

My word was enough for the people to give. No one ever asked for a single receipt. These are what I consider connections.

- Do you want a happy or sad story to end our conversation?

- Unfortunately, I have more sad ones. It would be difficult for me to share something hopeful from this perspective because the people I am in contact with are in very hopeless situations. They are living from one day to the next, they only see from one paycheck to the next. True, I just had a 63-year-old lady customer who was greeted with a "hello" in the shop when they saw her new hairstyle... That's enough for her. And for me too.

Aggtelek stalactite cave

You don't have to travel the world to find amazing caves and stalactites, you can find them in Hungary too. The Aggtelek stalactite cave is one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites in Hungary. It has 273 caves, 23 of which are strictly protected. The National Park's cave is a world record: the 25-kilometer-long Baradla-Domica cave system, which extends into Slovakia and is mostly located in Hungary, is the longest active stream cave in the temperate zone.

Kurgans in the Great Plain

When traveling in the Great Plain, we often pass by small and large hills and mounds of earth, almost without noticing them, although all but a few of these "earth pyramids" were built by the indigenous people of the area in the period from 3800 to 750 BC. These types of earthen structures are known as 'kurgans' and there are thousands of them in our country. They were originally built for a variety of purposes, including dwelling mounds, burial mounds, and guard mounds. The most famous and best-maintained of them is not far from Gyula, at the bend of the former Sebes-Körös riverbed.

The Vésztő-Mágori hill was turned into a Historical Monument decades ago, with a promenade and a park. The Attila Hill, the famous healing hill of Tápiószentmárton, has also gained national fame.

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Andesit rock formation ('slide') near the village of Bér - Photo: Hungarian Tourism Agency

Andesite ’slide’, Bér

In the outskirts of Bér, a small village in Nógrád county, there is a geological formation which is rare worldwide and is bent like a slide. While basalt is often found in columnar formations, it is rare in andesite. The unique rock was formed some 15 million years ago as a result of volcanic activity.

The palm of God – lookout tower

Between the villages of Hollókő and Felsőtold, on the National Blue Trail, a giant palm-shaped lookout tower attracts visitors. Called the "Palm of God", the observation deck was designed and created by Benjámin Csíkszentmihályi at the request of the Farkaskútvölgy Traditionalist and Horse Breeding Association. Anyone who comes up to see the magnificent panorama from the lookout should not just spend a day in the area. It's also worth visiting the World Heritage-protected Palóc village of Hollókő, the like of which is also found nowhere else.

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'The palm of God' between the villages of Felsőtold and Hollókő - Photo: Hungarian Tourism Agency

Fertőrákos Quarry and Cave Theatre

The former limestone quarry known as the Bishop’s Quarry attracts tens of thousands of tourists to Fertőrákos every year. The limestone quarrying here ceased in 1948. After centuries of mining, a deep valley and a labyrinth of gigantic chambers beneath the surface remain. The quarry has been a special venue for cultural events for decades. In summer, the excellent acoustics have been used to stage concerts, theatre, and opera performances and festivals.

Where once there was a tropical sea: the Bakony

100 million years ago, the Bakony area had a tropical climate and was covered by sea. This is reflected in the Úrkút, or Csárda-mountain paleokarst, which is second to none internationally. Since 1951, it has been a protected geological area of national importance, as it has preserved the traces of millions of years of geological change. Since 2013, a 1-kilometer-long nature trail has been open to visitors, with 6 stations, through this breathtaking landscape. The trail at Úrkút is divided into two levels: one branch runs along the edge of the sinkhole and circles the paleokarst. Descending down the giant wooden stairs into the deep valley, we are greeted by a cooler microclimate and protected plants, including ferns, and at its deepest point, there is even a cave where you can explore the pinkish Jurassic limestone to discover the remains of marine animals, fossilized shells and snails.

The 'Murderous' Lake in the Bakony Mountains

Near the village of Bakonybél, in the valley of the Somberek Séd, is the Lake of Hubertlak, also known as Bakony's Gyilkos (“Murderous”) Lake. A long time ago, the Esterházy family’s hunting lodge used to be here, but the building burnt down in 1967. The lake, fed by the springs of the Hamuházi Séd, was artificially created in the mid-1980s by flooding an alder grove. It is so named because, like its famous Transylvanian namesake, the stumps of dead trees like outstretched arms reach upwards, creating an unearthly and eerie sight.

Beehive Rock, Szomolya

This is also a storybook geological formation, which we could imagine as the home of fairytale creatures. The Beehive stones are rock formations or cone-shaped stone towers with niches (chambers) carved into their sides by people of ancient times. There is some speculation that the Beehive Rocks were used as cave dwellings, as suggested by the pottery vessels found by researchers in some places.

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Káli Basin - Photo: Hungarian Tourism Agency

Hungary's desert: the sand dunes of Fülöpháza

Sand dunes as far as you can see. It's like being in the Sahara desert. But this landscape is not in Africa, it's in our country: the sandy area in the Kiskunság National Park is a remnant of the alluvial cones of the Ancient Danube. The Danube filled the area up with alluvium, and when the water left the wind-driven sand sedimentation began.

János Molnár - Cave

The cave, located in the 2nd district of Budapest under the József Hill, is the largest underwater cave system in Hungary. It is the source cave of the Lukács Baths, but it is also the source of the Malom Lake. Since 1982 it has been a specially protected natural formation; at that time only 450 m of the 7 km of passages explored so far were known, which is still not the whole cave.

The hucul stud of Jósvafő

Genetically, the Hucul horse is the closest to the horses of the peoples (Avars, Szeklers) who lived in the Carpathian Basin before the Hungarian conquest. From the time of the conquest, this ancient horse was gradually replaced by new breeds. Over the centuries, other foreign breeds were used to create the indigenous breeds we have today. The Hucul, on the other hand, survived this period in the most isolated parts of the Carpathian Mountains, in its original form, without interbreeding with foreign horses. Selection over centuries of use in difficult terrain has transformed it into a little mountain horse, which has made it superior to other breeds in terms of its manageability, working ability, carrying capacity, and safe mountain walking. The Aggtelek National Park's Hucul stud is a national treasure, and its primary aim is to preserve the breed and its genetic values. The stud is kept semi-wild, about 1 km north of Jósvafő, in the pastures of Gergés-lápa, where it can be admired all year round.

The Káli Basin and the Hegyestű

The gateway to the beautiful Káli Basin is guarded by the towering Hegyestű (“Pointed Needle” formation) between the villages of Zánka and Monoszló. The northern half of the mountain, which has a regular cone shape from Lake Balaton, has been eroded by the former quarry, but the remaining mine wall reveals the interior of a basalt volcano that was active 5-6 million years ago. Lava solidified in the volcano's crater and separated into polygonal vertical columns as it cooled. The spectacle is unique in our country and rare in Europe.

The rhyolitic tuff of Kazár

The unique geological formation can be admired in the Mátra Mountains, near the village of Kazár, and can be seen in just over six places in the world. The surface of the rhyolite tuff is deeply grooved, lacking any vegetation, and was formed by volcanic eruptions of the Mátra about 20 million years ago. The white, easily friable soil surface was formed by the erosive action of water.

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The Szalajka stream near Szilvásvárad - Photo: Hungarian Tourism Agency

The Szalajka Valley and its Brown trouts

The high mountainous Szalajka Valley, which ends at Szilvásvárad, is one of the most beautiful and well-developed parts of the Bükk Mountains. The Szalajka stream has long been home to wild brown trout, and in order to breed them, the water of the stream has been held back in several places and artificial nurseries have been created.

The Lake of Hévíz

Famous for its beautiful water lilies and therapeutic thermal waters, the lake is a unique geological formation and Europe's largest warm-water lake, a wonder that attracts tourists from all over the world.

This article is supported by the Hungarian Tourism Agency.

The fact that the vigilantes in Nyíregyháza have been curbed is mainly thanks to László Szilágyi. He was a bright boy born in a farming family in 1924. His parents enrolled him at the Kossuth Lajos Lutheran High School in Nyíregyháza, but the war prevented him from completing his studies. In November 1944, he fled from the Soviet troops on his bicycle to the West but was captured by the Arrow Cross and transported to Komárom, where he was conscripted as a soldier. After his release from Soviet captivity, he became an official at the Hungarian Investment Bank in the early 1950s. He married and had two children.

He got hardly any work because of his origin

The year 1950 had something else in store, however, as both his and his wife’s father was declared a kulak (i.e.: a prosperous peasant who owned land and could hire workers thus pursued by the Soviet regime)  consequently László was dismissed from the bank, and his wife had to leave her job. Szilágyi was transferred to the Tiszamente Waterworks Construction Company at the end of 1951 but had to leave that position as well. He was able to find a job at the County Electricity Company, where he worked initially as a laborer and later as a design foreman. That’s where the revolution hit him.

On 26 October 1956, he went to work in the morning, but later he joined a demonstration in the town, which was led by a group of miners and workers from Miskolc, who arrived in trucks.

Szilágyi soon found himself in the thick of the action:

he became part of the delegation which, in the early afternoon, reached the printing press and managed to get 10,000 copies of the demands of the workers from Miskolc, with minor changes, printed, and then sent a telegram to Imre Nagy containing the support and their demands. Soon afterward, the provisional workers' council's steering committee was formed, and Szilágyi was elected chairman.

He wanted to prevent vigilantism

As a revolutionary leader, he tried to establish good relations with the local state and party organizations, but it soon became clear that no meaningful cooperation was possible. The first secretary of the county party committee told the party center in an intercepted telephone conversation that "a drunken gang had taken power in Nyíregyháza and were going to massacre the people". So on 28 October, they took control of the county. The next day, the final Nyíregyháza city workers' council and the county revolutionary national committee were formed, with Szilágyi elected as its leader.

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László Szilágyi on the balocony of the City Council in Nyíregyháza - Photo: HM HIM HL Military Court in Debrecen B.I.261-1957

László Szilágyi, as the county's number one leader, organised public services and ensured that wages were paid. He set up a national guard to prevent vigilantism. He was driven by a desire to control tempers when, in early November, he ordered the detention of the former head of the county party and the party secretary. He had similar considerations in mind when, at the meeting of the National Committee on 3 November, he proposed a clear message from the commander of the Soviet troops surrounding Nyíregyháza (they will not open fire, but if anyone attacks them, there will be a retaliatory strike): make "a decision that the radio and the loudspeaker [...] will announce every ten minutes what we have discussed with the Soviet command [...] so that the people should not do anything for their own good, should not initiate any provocation".

The Soviets were informed in writing that they would convict any person who, in spite of the agreement, would attack them.

Hanged instead of thanked

On 4 November, several former communist party leaders returned to power with the Soviet troops. The new public power body formed that day, the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Committee, included the former leaders. The next day, the former county council president praised his work with the following words "I have no grudge against comrade Szilágyi, the city owes him nothing but thanks, and I will work with him." In spite of all this, the Soviets arrested Szilágyi that very night and took him to Ungvár, but released him a few weeks later.

The Hungarian authorities have proved less permissive. On 21 February 1957, he was arrested and tried in a military trial. During the trial, the investigating officers used excessive physical violence against him, consequently, on the first day of the trial, Szilágyi asked for his testimonies to be considered null and void. 

On 13 December 1957, in his last speech, he asked in vain for his sentence to be imposed so that he could return to his family: he was found guilty and sentenced to death for the crime of initiating a conspiracy to overthrow the people's democratic state and two counts of violating personal freedom.

The most severe sentence was imposed despite the fact that there had been no deaths nor even serious atrocities in Nyíregyháza during the revolution.

This also caused serious problems for the new county leadership, as seen from the speech of András Benkei, the future first secretary of the county party committee and later Minister of the Interior, given on 18 April 1957: "... it is very difficult to work on agitation [...] because "nobody was hanged here, nobody was killed" - so the workers say in the villages [...] it is very difficult for honest workers to explain that it was a counter-revolution..."

However, the specific logic of the Kádár machinery of retaliation meant that the "criminal wavering" of the county could not go unpunished. By sentencing Szilágyi, a revolutionary leader of kulak origin, to death, the authorities set an example.

He was executed on the morning of 6 May in the courtyard of the Nyíregyháza County Prison. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the back of the Northern Cemetery in Nyíregyháza.

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The mug shot of László Szilágyi - Photo: HM HIM HL Military Court in Debrecen B.I.261-1957

As a last wish, he wrote a farewell letter to his wife, but it was never delivered, despite the legal obligation. The letter was destroyed by the commander of Nyíregyháza Prison, Sub-Lieutenant Gábor Kató, because it contained "opinions that were in part unacceptable [sic!]".

The widow kept the fate of the head of the family a secret from the children for a long time. The youngest daughter, Erzsébet, learned from one of her schoolmates that her father's death was not due to illness. Many 'friends' turned away from the family during these years, while they also found it difficult to make a living. The widow was not employed anywhere, and if she was, there was always a 'well-wisher' who reminded the employer of the husband's identity, so that the elderly grandparents had to go to work. Even as a college student in the 1970s, Erzsébet felt discriminated against, because an examining teacher, after deliberately degrading her grade, told her she should be glad she was tolerated at all in the institution.

Born of the love between a Hungarian soldier who was taken prisoner of war and a Kazakh woman

András Tomasovszky was born on 22 December 1923 in Almaty, in the Soviet Union (now Kazakhstan). His father, Mihály Tomasovszky, was a Russian prisoner of war in the First World War, who -despite being married in Hungary- married a young local woman and had three children. The family settled in Hungary in 1928, but as the father had not divorced his former wife, the Kazakh mother soon returned to the Soviet Union with her two children.

According to the family legend, little András stayed in Hungary because his father grabbed him off the train at the last moment.

After graduating from high school, András Tomasovszky worked on the family’s farm. In 1944 he married his step-cousin, Mária Bartha. They had three kids: Mária, Tibor and Ilona. In 1950, Tomasovsky was twice sentenced to six months in prison for endangering the public interest: first for unauthorized felling of trees, and then for failing to eradicate the Fall webworms’ caterpillars in his orchard. In the early 1950s, the father was listed as a kulak, his land was expropriated and a large family, also labeled kulaks, and the family of an AVO (communist secret police) officer was moved into his house. It was only through the goodwill of the former that the original owners were allowed to stay in the hall of their house. At that time, András Tomasovszky and his family were living in the shed of their house for a while.

From bystander to revolutionary

After their land was taken from them, Tomasovszky learned to be an electrician with his father and worked on the electrification of farms for the county electric company. Between January and December 1955, he was employed as an electrician at the Nyíregyháza Dairy Company and then worked for the County Construction Company in the same position.

The year 1956 brought major changes in his life, not only because of his new job but also because his wife died in July after a long illness.

It was after such events that 26 October, the day of the great demonstration in Nyíregyháza, arrived, during which Tomasovszky gradually moved from being a passive bystander to an active participant in the events.

Following the demolition of the Soviet heroic monument erected at the request of Marshal Malinovsky in 1945, he read out the demands of the people from Miskolc who had arrived in the city in the morning and played a primary role in catalyzing the events, which were adopted with minor changes and printed in 10000 copies at the local printing press. Tomasovszky took a leading role in the printing action, and later became the head of the committee that achieved the changeover of the army at Damjanich barracks. In the afternoon, he was elected a member of the five-man body set up as a temporary revolutionary leadership body. He was present when the demonstrators freed the prisoners from the prison, and in the late afternoon he tried to persuade the people demanding weapons at the barracks to see reason, but to no avail. The crowd was dispersed by the military opening fire, but there were no casualties.

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Andras Tomasovszky reading the demands of the people at the Malinovsky monument - Photo: Forrás: HM HIM HL Military Court in Debrecen B.I.261-1957

On 29 October, the county national revolutionary committee was formed to formalise the actual power relations. Tomasovszky became a member of the narrowly-constituted Steering Committee, and President László Szilágyi put him in charge of the intelligence group. Its members were in constant phone contact with the villages on the Hungarian-Soviet border, informing them of the movements of Soviet troops. Once the information had been received, it was passed on to the revolutionary committees in the capital and the provinces.

He did not want to flee the country

After the suppression of the revolution, several people urged Tomasovsky to leave the country, but he refused to do so, claiming his innocence. On 13 November 1956, he was arrested, and on 9 January 1957, the Nyíregyháza District Court sentenced him to three months imprisonment for concealing weapons. On 23 April he was arrested again and tried as a third defendant in the trial of László Szilágyi and his associates.

Although the family status of several of the defendants in the trial was considered a mitigating circumstance, Tomasovszky asked in vain for a sentence that his three children "should not be completely orphaned".

The military court did not take paternity into account for him or for Szilágyi, who had two children.

On 13 December 1957, Tomasovsky was found guilty of the crime of initiating a conspiracy to overthrow the people's democratic state and sentenced to death.

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Mug shot of András Tomasovszky - Photo: HM HIM HL Military Court in Debrecen B.I.261-1957

The 1957 propaganda publication, known as the County White Book, presented the events in Nyíregyháza as part of a country-wide "counter-revolutionary" action plan. (It is characteristic that in the publication Tomasovszky was referred to, among other things, as "the adventurer son of the kulak commissioner"). On this basis, the verdict is full of unfounded allegations aimed at smearing the revolutionary leaders, such as that "all their actions were aimed at restoring the capitalist, landholder system".

In his last speech at the appeal hearing on April 28, 1958, Tomasovszky drew the court's attention to a serious procedural "omission" ("I could have proved my case with witnesses, my witnesses were not examined"), but this was not enough to get the Supreme Court to reduce his sentence. His execution took place on 6 May in the courtyard of Nyíregyháza County Prison.

No mercy to ancestors or descendants

His father was dismissed from his job after the revolution was crushed. He could only find work as a digger, and even at the age of 70, he worked to support his wife and granddaughter Mária, who they took in at her father's request. Mária Tomasovszky recalls that after the execution, she "stopped being a child". Her father was not mentioned at all in the family until the change of regime, because of the fear that was ingrained in them, but her daughter thought of him in pain. “I lived through [my father] standing up under the gallows a hundred times. [...] Until I knew my husband, [...] it was a very rare night when I didn't fall asleep crying." Even though she passed the entrance exam, she was not admitted to the agricultural high school after the head of the institution was "informed” by the “authorities”.

Although she had completed a course in shorthand and typing, she was only offered a job as a cleaner in a ceramics factory, where she was constantly humiliated because of her family's past.

The constant mental ordeal was only somewhat alleviated when a job offer took her to the capital, where she knew no one but her host relatives.

The remains of Tomasovszky and Szilágyi were recovered at the dawn of the regime change, and on 6 October 1989, the two martyrs were given a dignified burial. The death sentences were declared null and void by the military court in Debrecen in February 1990. In 1991 they were both made honorary citizens of the city and in the same year, a memorial burial place was established for them in the Northern Cemetery.

This article was produced thanks to the National Remembrance Committee, based on the work of historian Gergely Czókos.

Did you decide early on to become a priest?

For a long time I didn't know what I was going to do when I grew up, and once my foster father, who had grown up in a very poor family, said: if I don't want to work, I should become a priest! (laughs) He meant it as a joke, but this is exactly how it turned out.

Then let me put it this way: what was the second influence that led you to theology?

My sister, Dr. Eszter Trufán, who is now a university professor, started going to youth Bible classes. I went with her once, and there was a beautiful girl there so from then on I went too! We made a great community, about 30 or 40 of us ate about a hundred kilos of French fries every weekend! And in Marosvásárhely (Târgu Mureș), in the Reformed high school where I was studying, so many people told me that I would never get into theology, that I made it my personal ambition to get in! In Transylvania, the highest grade in school was 10, you got grades for your behavior, and I earned a 10 in that only once. I wasn't a very good kid, and I was told that if I wanted to get into theology with those grades, well, good luck!

But luck - or someone else - was with you, and you were able to continue your studies in Kolozsvár (Cluj Napoca)...

There were eight of us competing for one single place, and only 12 boys got in. But I made it, and although for a while I felt that it was someone else's dream for me to be a priest, not mine, it was such a privilege to get in that I couldn't just leave. And then they started saying that if I didn't get hit by a tram, I'd be a priest anyway...

Did America help or intervene?

At the end of my third year, I came out to work for a summer on a ‘work and travel' visa. I come from a farming family, but when I was a child the land had already no value, even though we worked a lot in agriculture. We sold what we produced on the market, it was hard manual work because in Transylvania there were no machines for everything.

I made as much in one summer in America as my whole family made in a year at home...

Were financial opportunities a big pull for you to leave for good?

After university, the same visa would not have been granted, so after a quarter of a year, I came out to the US again to "quickly" get my residence papers and then finish my theology at home. That was the plan, and that was what God wrote over. The papers took 8 years to get, by which time I had been kicked out of theology. Like the little kid in the "once upon a time" folk tales, I tried my luck. I started driving a taxi in Chicago because the people I met at the Hungarian church there all swore by it. By the time I was 28, I had a million dollars in my pocket, and although I had always wanted to be rich, I realized that it was not enough. Uber wiped out the taxi business, so I went bankrupt. By the age of 30, I knew money wouldn't make me happy. I asked myself: do I need it? Not to mention that I already had a wife, who I divorced in 2015, which meant I was also down in my personal life.

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Pastor Áron Trufán with the set of the nativity play in the background on Christmas day 2021 - Photo: Áron Trufán

Then the only line that remained in your life was faith and religion. What did you do with it?

I felt that theology did not prepare me to stand up on Sundays to give long sermons. But in the meantime the old pastor had left, the church had no money, and I started preaching as a kind of missionary - already at the end of 2006.

That's when I realized that all people need is "just" to make friends with God.

At first, there was only a handful of people coming in, and for years I didn't even accept payment. In the meantime, we started to organize the Gulyás Festival with the community, which grew into an all-American Hungarian festival with 3-4 thousand people! Wherever you looked there was a portion of gulyás cooking in big pots. Second-generation Hungarians could experience the feeling that their parents back home probably only told them about: eating authentic Hungarian flavours and gathering around a bogrács. This was new to them because in America it is forbidden to light fires in parks, but not on church grounds! The Goulash Festival is still organized by more than a hundred volunteers who help to prepare, run and clean up afterward. These people don't all go to church, but they are connected to God on some level. It's easier to convert dollars into euros than to convert volunteer help into Bible reading, but I still believe the two can be worth the same because they are doing it for God through our community.

So more and more people became friends with God and with each other thanks to the new pastor.

And that's why I wanted to finish theology! The problem was that if I had left the country, I could not have returned legally. At first, I tried to get the whole examining board to travel from Kolozsvár here at my expense for me to take the exams, but they wouldn't even give me a reply. Then I tried the online courses at Komárom, but even there it was not accepted that the Reverend was not able to travel home to take the exam. Meanwhile, they saw the work I was doing in Chicago and told me to get a degree out here. God willing, I ended up with a degree in theology from South Carolina!

How has your modern personality been received by people who may be used to something different?

The older people opted out, they thought I was preaching too young. The young people hadn't come yet because the culture didn't include going to church as a young person. Then I got some of the simplest but greatest "evangelists":

For example, the Hungarian car mechanic called his friends and said, "What are you doing on Sunday? Come to church instead!" So bit by bit the community grew.

On an average Sunday, there are 30-40 people there. We've rebuilt the old belfry, and we toll the bell, but it's not the people who hear it that come, it's not like at home. It's true, there are not many more people at church at home either, even though the whole village hears the bells.

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Photos owned by Áron Trufán

Meanwhile, what happened to your personal life and your living after the big crash?

I have found that God has a sense of humour. I found my living in a trucking business. And you should know that I used to dance in Marosvásárhely (Târgu Mures) in the youth group of the Maros Art Ensemble, the Napsugár. Had I not chosen theology, I could have become a professional folk dancer. In Chicago with my first wife Noémi, around 2008, we started to revive the somewhat dead folk dance movement, but after the divorce, I left it. Because it's not just about tapping your leg and spinning a girl, it's a way of life that can only be done with total enthusiasm. And my enthusiasm was gone by then. So when I met my second wife, Kata, who was born in Orosháza - in 2015 at a folk dance camp in Transylvania because I had travelled back home for that - she was happy to have found a good partner, but I didn't become her partner in the dance.

But in private life, yes. How come she moved to Chicago after you?

Kata was working as a teacher in England and already had a flat in London when I "complicated" her life. On a blank piece of paper, we wrote Chicago and London, pros and cons. Then Chicago came out as the winner, so Kata moved, even though I could have gone too. Today we have two beautiful sons.

Overall, do you feel that the church has become the strongest cohesive force for Hungarians in Chicago?

In the early 2000s, many Transylvanians like me came to the US, perhaps we had more of a religious spirit, and there was a greater need for solidarity.

It is certain that the church has a community-bonding role: not everyone comes for the sermon on Sunday, but because the person next to them is Hungarian, and they haven't spoken Hungarian all week, and can finally shake hands and talk to each other.

My grandmother wasn't a pastry chef, she didn't even have a huge recipe book, but she baked 5-10 kinds of cookies incredibly delicious! She wouldn't let me learn from her at the time, but I started baking in Chicago and bringing the cakes on Sundays for the Hungarians to sit around a plate after worship. So yes, we are making friends with God, but the cake is delicious, too! Since then, I've been doing my share of making kütőskalács (‘chimney cake’) at events. Sometimes we grill together because we have everything we need for that because of the festivals. God also glues these bits of solidarity together. Everybody wants to belong, and although some people are less active, they bring their American friends to an event to show them Hungarian traditions.

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Áron Trufán and his family in the summer of 2022

What is the main message you want to give to people in your services?

Sometimes I listen to other people's sermons. I hear them saying that you will go to hell if you drink, if you don't love your family, or if you are lazy and don't work. But do we really still have to scare people that they will burn in hell? And then there are those who only go to church twice a year, at Christmas and Easter, and get the message that it is good that you are here, but how much better it would be if you came every Sunday. It would be better, yes, but that's not what he wants to hear, because he can only come twice and that’s it. And if he hears that then, after a while he won't come at all. So I'll simplify: make friends with God! If you have an influential friend in the police force, or an established doctor, lawyer, or politician, you are proud of that saying if something needs to be done, you just tell him. All the while God is there, and we pray that the power and the glory are His, but why don't we want to make friends with Him?

If you want an influential friend, you might want to give God a chance. Others too, but Him as well. Because he's been trying to befriend you for so long...

How do you feel that being a Hungarian in other countries - Romania, the United States - has added to your personality?

I grew up in the belief, I learned from my grandmother that as a Szekler, God expects a little more from me than from others. In Transylvania, we had to stick together, anyone who was Hungarian there was a friend, and we were part of the same team. Maybe that is why the core of our community in the USA is also Transylvanian. We are trying to pass on the values to our 4 and 6-year-old children, we don't speak English at home, so they don't speak English at home either. But we know this can change in time, we see many little ones slowly stop speaking Hungarian, and then become ashamed that they can't, and then eventually they don't speak anymore. Maybe we should move home before that point, who knows? But in the meantime, the Hungarian community can count on me, because the Transylvanian blood also has that hospitality in it that makes everyone genuinely feel that it is good to be together.

Karolina, when did you first feel the inspiration start to work in you, how did painting start to make its way into your life?

S.K.: In January 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, my brother and I stayed at home and studied online. I did a lot of drawing during that time, of course I had been drawing since I was a very young child, but a lot more at the time. One day my parents noticed one of my drawings on my desk and asked me what my plans were for drawing. And I told them I wanted to start painting...

Ákos, as a father, how did you react to your daughter's new hobby, how did you feel when you saw her first works?

Dr. S.A.: Since there are no painters in the family, Karolina has brought a whole new world into our family with this field. Every day it is a great joy to see her talent unfold.

Karolina, how have you experienced the last two years? Do you feel that you have embarked on a journey that could take you very far? Do you plan consciously or do you prefer to let things happen on their own?

S.K.: Painting comes naturally to me, but at the same time I plan each piece carefully. I don't have a teacher, so everything I know I learned in the online space, what I was curious about I looked up online and got the answer. Where this path will take me, I don't know yet. I have goals, including how I can help others to learn visual arts, but what will happen later is a secret for the future.

All I know is that painting will always be a part of my life.

Ákos, how much have you had to reorganize your family's life and Karolina's life? Can your daughter manage on other fronts - school, extra lessons, sports - as well as painting?

dr. S.Á.: Karolina's life has not changed. She still goes to school, where she is an excellent student, and plays sports every day, moreover, she is a member of the national team of her age group in tennis. What has changed is her free time, which she spends entirely on painting. She comes home in the evening and until she goes to bed, she plans and paints as she pleases.

Karolina, can you describe what you want to communicate, to show with the painting?

S.K.: At my spring exhibition, I found that the messages my paintings held could be transmitted to people, to young people. Acceptance of each other, environment protection, animal and nature conservation, everything that my series Wonders of the Universe were about... I'm also very happy that many people have written to me on social media to say that they like my paintings, and there was even a class of high school students who wrote during their art class that they were talking about one of my paintings and that the picture was projected on the wall. In fact, almost all of my friends and many of my acquaintances have started painting, which must mean that I have an influence on young people.

Ákos, your profession - and that of others in your family - requires that you give a hundred percent or more of yourself to succeed (Karolina's mother is Dr. Tünde Szabó, a former Olympic silver medalist swimmer, and her uncle is Attila Sávolt, a former Olympic tennis player - editor). Can Karolina carry on this "legacy"?

dr. S.Á.:

I think the talent that comes with genetics is not worth much without diligence. This is true in sports, civil society, and in the arts.

Karolina is a very hard-working, determined little girl who is also strong-willed enough to know what she wants and to achieve it.

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Left: Karolina Sávolt and dr. Ákos Sávolt; right: Karolina painting – Photo: Sávolt family

Karolina, to what extent do you incorporate the feedback you get on your paintings into your new works? Are you inspired by the opinions of others or do you create more from your own inspiration, intuitively rather?

S.K.: Since I don't have a teacher, nobody influences what I create or want to paint in any way. That's why I have so many styles in my work, and the combination of all of them has now resulted in a unique style of my own. I like to use a lot of paints, I like dimensional spaces, and I like realistic movement, but at the same time, 15th and 16th-century painters are my big favourites. From all this, I have developed my own magical realist style...

Ákos, what does it mean to the family that your daughter is doing something that is perhaps unique in the world, considering her age and talent?

dr. S.Á.: I agree, this is absolutely how I see it, how I feel. My wife and I have the task to support our child in everything she wants. We've been living in this for two years now, and her art has only been known to the general public since the exhibition. Karolina has been invited to many places, even to exhibitions abroad, which are being organized. Because of her age, as she only turned 12 years old last May, the organizers want to use the high-tech technology of the 21st century, i.e. they are preparing a so-called immersive exhibition. It wants to show her wonder not only in our country but also in international art fields, in big cities abroad, and in many parts of the world.

Karolina, apart from painting, what else do you like to do? Are there any of your works that are particularly close to your heart?

S.K.: I love animals and nature, but I also enjoy the theatre and art history. I read a lot and of course, sport and exercise are very important to me. I enjoy learning languages, I speak English and Spanish very well, which I think is very important to understand

The beauty of art is that it has a different message for everyone.

Ákos, your field of work is a difficult one, where besides uplifting cases there are obviously depressing experiences. Do Karolina's works of art help you to get away from the everyday?

dr. S.Á.: Karolina's paintings are full of energy, which is palpable even if you stand in front of them and look at them. The colours, the beauty, and the positive message really relax me after a hard day or even a week.