You are a mother of three and a wife, and you also run two NGOs: the Együtt az Életért Egyesület (”Together for Life Association”) and the Emberi Méltóság Központ (’Human Dignity Centre’). What is the purpose of these?

Together for Life was founded in 2008 to help struggling mothers who feel burdened by their pregnancy and see no way out. I can solve no mother's problem, I can't have her baby, but I can help her to solve it herself. I know families who would like to adopt, I can collect baby clothes if they need them, I can help people find their district nurse, a social worker, what support they can get, or I can simply listen. We also run a helpline so you can call us at any time and ask questions. We try to find a tailor-made solution for everyone so that they could say yes to the life they carry and would not think that abortion is the only solution to their problem. In the association, we have also created the professional background necessary to prepare open adoptions. Within a few years, we saw that in most cases there was no safety net around the mother to help and empower her to keep her child. In fact, it is the breakdown of families and the social image of abortion that has led to the fact that the number of abortions in Hungary is still so high. It was then that we decided that it would be good to create an organization to represent the protection of family and life at the national and international levels. Thus the Human Dignity Centre was born, whose work is followed and supported by thousands of people. We also take up important issues within the association, such as the recent court condemnation of the "fake bishop who administered Holy Communion with an abortion pill".

How did you become a pro-life activist?

I am not personally involved in this issue, I have not had an abortion, I am not an adopter or adopted. My vocation comes from helping someone else. Seventeen years ago, I was working for a multinational company and one of my colleagues became pregnant unwillingly and was about to have an abortion. She shared her thoughts and feelings with me, we talked several times, and then she disappeared for a while.

She went to have an abortion, but at the last minute, when she was getting dressed for the operation, she changed her mind. Later she thanked me for helping her to become a mother.

That was the first moment when I felt I had a job to do in this area.

What did you say to her?

It’s rather what I didn't say... I listened to her and asked her: what was on her mind, what were the pros and cons of abortion, what she wanted, why she couldn't have a child, what her family and her environment thought, how she imagined her life in five years' time. She was very lonely, but she found help from her family, one of her relatives stood by her. Then, when our first daughter was born and I was living the relatively closed life of a new mother, one of the shop assistants I talked to from time to time said to me: "I haven't told anyone yet, but I'll tell you: I'm expecting a baby". I took this as another signal from God. I prayed a lot to find out if this was really what I was supposed to do. And God showed me the way in a beautiful way, that is, that I should not really go in any other direction than the one he wanted me to go.

Where does this deep faith and trust in God come from?

I went to a success-oriented high school, there was no question that I was the master of my life, that my choices determined where I would go, who I would become. Then, at the age of twenty, I converted to God and accepted that God, not I, was the Lord of my life.

God has a plan for everyone, so the path is given, it's not me who builds it, the question is whether I will go down it.

But faith in providence means not only that God will work it out, but also that He is counting on me. We must do our part and trust Him since he is carrying us in the palm of his hand.

Your name is one of the first in Hungary today when it comes to life and family protection. You make your voice heard on many issues, you stand up when necessary, but you don't shout for what is right. Are you a silent warrior?

I've always had a great sense of justice, my parents told me when I was a child to become a judge. In fact, I am not a loud fighter because I always like to back up what I say with facts. However, when it comes to child protection, I can get carried away. Obviously having three children gives us a different perspective and perhaps a more distant view than someone who doesn't have any and doesn't want any. But I will not get into unnecessary arguments and emotional drumbeats. I have been in the field of life and family 00protection for fourteen years, I do not have to accept every invitation to debate, nor do I have to prove to myself and others that what I do is right. I believe that we need to speak to everyone, not just those who move within our coordinate system because there are a good number of liberals and non-Christians who would raise their eyebrows if a drag queen walked into their child's school, or if it were possible to have an abortion at the age of twelve without parental supervision, as the WHO recommends. However, there are also some believers who think abortion is acceptable and are happy that someone is finally talking to children about sex, even if it is promoting homosexuality. So it is not a matter of faith that we stand for, so we speak to everyone and we put it in terms that everyone can understand.

How do you see your role as an NGO?

One of the most important tasks of an NGO is to bring grassroots initiatives and the voice of the people to decision-makers so that people's will and demands are not only expressed in a voting booth every four years but also in the meantime.

We are the voice of Hungarian families both in Hungary and abroad. Our other important task is to ask for what is feasible. For example, we have been trying for years to prevent programs and teaching materials that promote homosexuality and transsexuality in any form from being introduced into schools without the parents' knowledge. This has now been achieved, but it has been a long road to success. I am pleased that the Hungarian Government is in favor of the protection of life and the family and is taking a leading role in this area in Europe so that we face open doors here at home when we approach decision-makers.

What else do you do?

I continue to run our family business, where I now get my salary. By divine providence, we have been able to set it up and run it without taking up too much of my time, so I can do the association and volunteer work nicely alongside.

Do you talk to your teenage girls about your vocation?

I have always tried to keep my work separate from my family, both in terms of time and space, but if asked, I answered. When they were eight or ten, we took them once to an adoption camp.

That was the first time they were confronted with the fact that someone who was adopted was not being brought up by their birth parents, but they didn't ask why they were adopted, they asked how someone could become adoptable.

Now that they are teenagers, they are showing more interest in my work, one of them is particularly sensitive to the subject, but I don't want any of them to follow me. This is my vocation, not theirs.

What gives you satisfaction in your work and can you measure the results in figures?

We don't measure the success of our work by how many mothers decided to keep their children, or how much we have reduced the number of abortions, how many adoptions we have helped with, or how many baby blankets we have collected. It's how many women in distress we have stood by, how many we have helped to balance themselves, their life situation, to feel more comfortable and able to make their own choices.

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Edit Frivaldszky presented with Chance For Life Award by Minister Katalin Novák

In December, you were awarded the Chance For Life Award. Where do you place this recognition in your life?

In 2013, I have already received a state award from President János Áder in recognition of my work in the fight against violence against women and the protection of human life. I feel that the award I received then was primarily for the subject I work on, while this one is not only for it, but also for me. As it was said in the laudation, it was for my persistent work over more than a decade, which also means that working in the field of the protection of life was not just a passing fancy for me, but a vocation. I am delighted with the award, which is a newly established recognition, and especially with the fact that I received it from Minister Katalin Novák herself.

What is your most important job now?

At the beginning of February, we'll be showing the Hungarian dubbed version of the American movie Unplanned, which tells the story of one woman's amazing transformation based on real events. Abby Johnson wanted to help women in trouble all her life. As the director of Planned Parenthood USA, she assisted in twenty-two thousand abortions, and one day she saw something that changed her life. She converted to Christianity and joined the pro-life movement, and today is one of America's leading pro-life advocates. I consider the making of the Hungarian version of this movie a great achievement in my work. I do not know how many people will choose life after watching it, how many will change their minds, because there will be no statistics, but I am sure that this movie will help to make people's minds clear: human life begins at the moment of conception and abortion does not serve the well-being of women.

Volunteers joined forces

"It's the first time I've driven this car," remarks Miklós as we bump along the motorway. The wind occasionally tilts the tall van, which has been so loaded with donations in front of the Klebelsberg Culture Curia that the only way to close the door is the classic "Quickly pull your hand away and close the door" method. "I think you're doing fine!" - I reassure my fellow traveler, whom I've known for barely ten minutes. Half an hour ago, I didn't even know I was going to spend the day at the Ukrainian-Hungarian border, but Miklós' morning was just as spontaneous.

We are heading towards Papos. The village, which is two and a half hours' drive from Budapest, is not much in the news as it is not a border village, but the mayor told the organizer of the action that a donation was needed because refugees were being housed in the community center, and the civilians started organizing immediately. "Where did you get the van?" - I ask Miklós. "A guy left it here, left the keys and the registration papers at the reception, and said that volunteers could use it for three days," explains the father of two, who found the call for helpers on the Facebook group of District II. "Originally they were going to go with two cars, but the FB post prompted several people to offer their cars and there was a request in the morning if anyone could drive this one. I volunteered," continues Miklós, who also tells me that several families were accommodated in Papos, many sleeping on the ground, for whom they collected mattresses, bedding, and food, among other things.

Lost in thought, I look out of the window, my eyes flickering as I follow the passing apple trees of Szabolcs. On the way, of course, we talk about the war, and how neither of us would have imagined a few days ago that we would be fellow travelers in such an operation.

One of the greatest strengths of volunteers is these fast-weaving yet strong connections based on unconditional trust, creating a dense web in which strangers treat each other as friends.

"We are a tight-knit community"

When we arrive at Papos, packing is already in full swing. Locals and volunteers from far and wide are lined up, passing bags and boxes to each other.

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Locals and volunteers unloading donations in Papos - Photo: Zsejke Jámbor-Miniska ​

I learn from the mayor of the village of around 900 people that the refugees needed mattresses, blankets, and pillows, as well as toiletries, non-perishable food, and children's toys.

He says that the local community is very tight-knit. There is a lot to be proud of, there is a lot of unity in the community, donations keep coming in and many people have come to do their bit in person.

  "We're not a border town, so we don't feel the war yet, only that people are coming who are depressed about having to leave their life's work. They are crying, they have family members, parents, brothers, and sisters left behind, they just came with a suitcase," says Béla Illés. The mayor was told by Pastor Viktor Bocskor on the day the war broke out that several of his congregation needed shelter. "I offered the community house for this purpose," continues the mayor, "It was a very difficult start, we had to get matresses, toilet paper, other practical things for daily needs. A friend of mine connected me with Tamás, who told Krisztina Szalay that a collection was needed, which apparently went well. It's emergency aid now, when the war broke out, we had to act immediately," says Béla Illés, adding that fortunately, they can now concentrate more and more on planning ahead.

 “It's not an easy situation, because we have to find a way to manage their lives, create jobs, if they are going to live here for a longer period of time they have to be able to get by somehow. The children have to go to kindergarten and school, and we have to and can help them with that too.”- adds the head of the village.

I spot Krisztina Szalay among the people in the crowd. The well-known actress has a strong will to do something. She is also the main coordinator of this civil initiative in District II. I'd like to ask her how she managed to mobilize so many people in such a short time, but I'll have the chance to do that later because after the packing is done, I'll be directed to the refugee shelter, which is only a few minutes walk from the place that can be used as a temporary warehouse by the community.

"Your own, if they fall, will fall into your hands"

As we approach the house, we hear fragments of speech through the walls, and with each step, it becomes clearer that there is a church service going on inside. "...Thousands may fall, tens of thousands may perish, but your people will not fall, and your people, if they fall, will fall into your hand, which is the hand of salvation," prays the pastor.

I look around the room. The sight is shocking. Previously, I had only experienced the conflict first-hand through the hard-working volunteers, but seeing the community center has put a face to the war. Immediately, my gaze falls on the children playing on the mats on the floor. Their parents are listening to the words of their spiritual leader, men, and women, old and young, seeking comfort in the words of the pastor. The service ends with a communal singing. It is moving to see Hungarians of Ukrainian citizenship singing in Hungarian in Papos, not knowing how their future will unfold. It is then that I become truly aware that we have not managed to avoid this war, and that Hungarians are already involved in it. "Receive me, Jesus, ever closer", the faithful sing with a pure heart in their mother tongue.

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Refugees pray in Papos - Photo: Zsejke Jámbor-Miniska

Viktor Bocskor, the pastor of the Evangelical Christian Church, who came to Papos from Transcarpathia twenty years ago, has lived his life as a commuter, spending two days in the village and five in Transcarpathia before the outbreak of the war. "This congregation you see here was in Transcarpathia. We gathered there several times a week. These people have known each other for a long time, we have spent retreats together before, talking about the Bible and God's truth. These occasions helped us to make the present time together not burdensome for them. Of course, when we used to gather together, we didn't meet in this uncertainty, everyone knew where they were going home. We can no longer look back, although we might want to. It is not because of our desires that this is not possible, but because home is still a hopeless prospect. So now we look upwards, God, what are you showing us next?" says the pastor, who looks back on the past sixteen years of the church as God's way of preparing them for what is to come.

 ”We arrived from Berehovo district at midnight on Thursday. We thought for a long time about whether we should go, and the fact that we finally decided to do so is also due to our attitude towards God."

 „Believers must look first to where they can serve God, second to the interests of those entrusted to them, and third to the church. We didn't have any plan, we didn't think this would happen, we prayed a lot that it wouldn't happen. We would love to go back, but it depends on the circumstances." –says a father from Transcarpathia.

As I look into the eyes of the families, I see sadness and serenity, the latter because they are holding together, feeling the strength of community. When several dozens of refugees are housed in a community centre, there is no intimacy, it is difficult to retreat, and it matters a lot how relationships develop between people. But in this community, no one has anything to fear, it's like a big family coming across the border together. The pastor wrote to the congregation on Thursday morning saying the border is still open, come while you can. The people considered this warning and set off at 5 PM. The last family crossed the border at 11.30 p.m. Ukrainian time, and half an hour later it was closed, and men aged 18-60 have not been allowed to leave the country since. “We came together, not to cross the border and scatter across the country or to other countries where friends and acquaintances live. Fifty-four of us crossed in total, three of us staying with families, the rest of us sheltering in two camps ten kilometres apart” – adds Viktor Bocskor. I cannot ask the pastor any more questions because they are waiting for me. Kriszta tells me that we must continue on to Barabás, closer to the border, where we must transfer things that are needed there. I am in Krisztina's car, with her adult daughter Lulu Cserna (also an actress) in the passenger seat. Krisztina drives the big van calmly and with a concentration towards the Ukrainian border.

 ”My friends were conscripted”

We see a man standing by the road. "Where are you going?" - Kriszta asks rhetorically, then slows down and picks up the hitchhiker. It turns out that the man is on his way to the border to wait for his children, who are crossing today. We can't drive him for long, we have to go in another direction. I realize that for Kriszta this is not the stage of a theatre, she is really the type who picks up hitchhikers without hesitation to ask what she can do to help. On the twenty-minute drive to Barabás, we finally get a chance to talk a bit about how the Klebelsberg Culture Curia was filled with donations by Sunday morning.

"It started by putting out a call for Facebook groups in District II that we might be needed. Then I started making phone calls in the area to see what was specifically needed, because it's important to know that, so that we can take what is needed and to where the need is. Here, for example, there are no babies, so diapers are not requested, but we know that they are needed elsewhere," says Krisztina as her daughter tell her where to exit the roundabout. I'm bumbling in the back seat, leaning forward to better understand what she's saying.

"Of course, people often like the posts, but what happened here is much more than sympathy. The desire to give has not diminished. We organized the cars during the night, there was so much stuff that we planned to have two cars, but we ended up having to go with six."

 "You see, they're still applying to deliver. When we were packing up at the Curia, a man from Transcarpathia came up to us and said he'd be happy to translate. Last night at 11 o'clock the Hungarian Reformed Church Aid called me from Nyugati Railway Station, saying there was a family of seven, Ukrainians, they don't speak Hungarian. They really need an interpreter for these things. Fortunately, the situation was resolved in ten minutes. The people of Transcarpathia say that there will be a big movement now, the next wave will come, and it will be bigger than this one, because many people have not been able to leave until now, and there certainly will be those who have to escape," adds Krisztina. Compared to the stereotypes people have about actresses being addicted to the spotlight, it's not at all important for her to be in the pictures. It's particularly nice to see this after witnessing a scene at the border where a volunteer asks another volunteer to take a photo of him delivering a package, which he then immediately uploads to the news feed. He had to click several times to get the right angle.

Donations continue to arrive in Barabás. As I'm packing the boxes, I have to stop for a minute among the piles of boxes, because I've never seen so much stuff crammed into one place.

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Donations in Barabás - Photo: Zsejke Jánbor-Miniska

I learn from the mayor that the community has had a busy few days, only experiencing the war so far by receiving desperate people.

"People coming from further up North say they see and hear explosions. The news of the war has moved many people, many are coming. We have made a shelter, there is a lot of support, we receive a lot of donations. We are also working to transfer some of the food aid to Transcarpathia because there is also a need for food and duvets there."

- says Gábor Daróczi, as his children, who have been chasing him around, snuggle up to him. There are only a few people in the shelter at the moment, but locals say the situation is constantly changing. Just a short time ago, the room was crowded, a large group of Belarusians had just left for Warsaw, most of the refugees have found a ride and are on their way inland or abroad, and volunteers are bracing for the next wave.

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Shelter in Barabás - Photo: Zsejke Jámbor-Miniska

A little boy plays with a stuffed dog on the camp bed. I step up to him and crouch down. "Your dog is cute, have you named him yet?" - I ask. "It's not my dog, I found it here," he says with downcast eyes. "Then you can keep it if you want, someone meant it for you when they put it in this box" - the boy's face brightens, happy to play. I ask the family what's out there. "Horror, horror, World War III is breaking out!" - the boy exclaims, his mother patting his head affectionately. She explains that they came from Transcarpathia, her husband works in Hungary, and is waiting for the family to be reunited. Her transport is already arranged, but she is very sad. It was difficult to leave her life behind, but they decided to flee without hesitation.

"There was nothing to wait for," she keeps saying.

"In the comments section, they keep saying that there is no need to flee from Transcarpathia, that they don't even take the men away, and that you can't even see a tank," I say. "This is not true. There is a reason to flee," she answers angrily. "I have friends who were taken to Kyiv to fight," says the young girl in the corner. Her friends were taken to fight at the age of 18 or 19 without any previous training. "News comes in that some have died. Many men have been taken away," she continues, "People are afraid. It's very intimidating, everyone has left, the villages have been emptied," she adds sadly, and she also wonders if there will be nowhere to go back to.

Some of the refugees say that there are Hungarian settlements in Transcarpathia from which they have left, and that Ukrainians have taken their place in abandoned houses. They fear for their belongings, their family memories, the life they left behind, not knowing what they will find when they go home and whether they want to go home at all. We're trying to find out if we can take someone to Budapest, but the people in the shelter are all waiting to be picked up. Food is available, the volunteers have done a great job here too, the team is coordinated by the local notary.

The civilians are tired, but their drive is unabated, whether Ukrainian or Hungarian, Belarusian or Nigerian, they are trying to help everyone equally.

Those who want to volunteer or donate are advised to inquire before they go and to consult the coordinators of specialized organizations. Many people have lost hope because of the war, and we are living our days in uncertainty, not knowing where the situation will escalate, but there is hope in these actions, a boundless will to act that restores our faith in humanity.

The pictures have been taken by the author.

Looted shops, emptying villages, fear - that's pretty much what the mood in Transcarpathia is like now. Schools, post offices and small shops have closed. In the first days, frightened people stormed shops, banks, and the Hungarian consulate to apply for passports, and then set off en masse for Hungary.

Most of the people in Bene in Beregszász (Berehovo) also left for Hungary, leaving only the elderly in the village. "On the evening of 23 February we went to bed in good spirits, and then on the morning of 24 February, we woke up to the news that Ukraine had been attacked. A bomb had been dropped 150 km from us, and Kharkiv, the second most populous city, had been bombed all night. So why shouldn't our little village of barely two thousand people be attacked?" - shares the concerns of István, a high school student who arrived in Hungary with his family a few days ago. They walked to Tiszabecs, where they were met by a friend and a large number of volunteers. "Volunteers came every five minutes with hot tea, sandwiches, cakes and later they even made a big cauldron of paprikáskrumpli! I have never seen such unity that I experienced among Hungarians!"- he says.

"We only brought a change of clothes"

Children experience events with similar difficulty as older people, even if they do not understand the horrors of war. "The teachers have tried to reassure the class, although the kids don't really understand what is happening. Some of them were crying because the school closure would mean that the carnival would be canceled," shares a mother from Beregszász (Berehovo). Although they live in Balazsér, Krisztina's husband works in Hungary and only comes home every four months. She was afraid to stay in Ukraine with their four children, so she followed him to Hungary. "The two little ones were happy to see their father, but the big ones were very upset that they had left everything at home, as we had only brought a change of clothes. They also felt sorry for their cats, who are now being fed by my sister and a neighbour," she says. The family came to Hungary with great difficulty. Long queues were already forming as they approached the Ukrainian border, and a fight broke out between frustrated drivers who had been waiting for hours. In addition, the grandparents who had set off with them were forced to turn back because Krisztina's 15-year-old brother's passport had expired and he was not allowed to cross. "When we had to part, even those who didn't belong to us cried" she recalls. In order to reach the Hungarian border with her children and her other brother sooner, she decided to continue on foot, but even so, they arrived at the Hungarian border after two hours, where they had to wait another two hours because their friend with transport couldn't meet them because his car broke down. Finally, an unknown family helped them find accommodation for the night. They are now staying with their mother-in-law and, although she hopes they won't have to stay in Hungary for long, she is trying to find a place to rent.

"My son is frightened by every noise"

Men between 18 and 60 years old who are of military age will no longer be allowed to cross the border from 25 February. As a result, many women and their children have been forced to set off alone, without their partners, and families have been torn apart.

The situation was reversed for Tamara, a single mother raising her son alone: the mother stayed at home and her 17-year-old son went to live with his godmother in the Czech Republic. The mother feared that her son would be conscripted. "I don't understand what they want with 18-year-old inexperienced children. I didn't give birth to my son for war" she says. She and her son talked a lot about the war, which frightened the boy. "We didn't sleep at night because every noise scared him. He is safe now, but he is worried about me and his grandmother. What will happen to her if something happens to us?" Tamara has not left Ukraine because she has nowhere else to go. Moreover, at the moment she has no access to her wages (panic withdrawals have led banks to limit cash withdrawals to 3,000 hryvnias, which is about 100 USD) and she is afraid to leave her small house. "I'm afraid that by the time I come back, someone will take it."

According to István, who fled from Bene, the residents there fear the same thing, that Ukrainian refugees will come to the town and steal from them, taking over their houses. "My grandfather, 73, does not want to leave his house, which his grandfather built with great difficulty, to foreigners. I, on the other hand, in this situation think that I can have a house anywhere, but I only have one life."

Those who stayed

There are also many Hungarians who are staying in Ukraine of their own free will.

Elvira from Transcarpathia does not want to leave the country out of love for her country. She is now working as she has always done, leaving her three children behind. "I live 200 meters from the radar station, and I work there too, but I'm not afraid at all. We have stocked up on food and candles in case it comes to that, but I think everything will be sorted out soon. I have confidence in the president, who loves the country and the people," she says. She thinks people are panicking unnecessarily and she does not understand the veterans who have fled to Hungary fearing conscription instead of defending their country. "I also tell my children not to be afraid, but to believe and pray. Whatever happens, we will stay together and hold on as long as we can."

Lajos from Nagydobrony is also optimistic. Although many of his foreign friends have invited him, and he has prepared the most necessary things, he is not going anywhere for the time being. But most of the locals have already left the country - 2,000 of the 6,000 inhabitants remained. No wonder, as hundreds have been called up for military service. Lajos, however, is not worried about conscription - he did not serve because of his university studies at the time, so he is not on the register. "There is no major military base in Transcarpathia, only the 128th Brigade in Munkács (Mukachevo), who inflicted heavy losses on the separatists at Debaltseve in 2015, so we hope that they will not fire on Nagydobrony," he explains the reason for his decision.

What happens next?

The Hungarians who we talked to in Transcarpathia all reported that the situation is much worse than in 2014 when the war broke out in eastern Ukraine. "The fighting was not so close then, but now the Russian soldiers are pushing up," Tamara points out. "This war is much bloodier than the previous one, and it's only been going on for a few days," adds István.

The situation of the country and of Hungarians in Ukraine is uncertain. Lajos expects a drastic rise in prices and emigration and believes it is likely that the current government will be replaced by a pro-Russian government that will revise the language law (the public use of the mother tongue).

Tamara also fears that the events will further exacerbate the Ukrainian-Hungarian conflict in Transcarpathia.

In Beregszász (Berehovo), there have already been several conflicts between Ukrainian refugees settled in the city and locals. "When they hear us speaking Hungarian, they look at us with a grim look, which makes us feel like outsiders." And the limit on cash withdrawals has also led to an increase in thefts and burglaries. She says the best she can do now is pray for the war to end.

Many people start a similar business because of family involvement. What motivated you to start an autism-friendly chocolate manufactory?

The idea is a personal one for me too: I have an autistic son. I didn't start out wanting to start a business, I was looking for a hobby and enrolled in a confectionery school where I developed a passion for chocolate making. My wife was preparing a paper for the college to present a social innovation - describing an imaginary workplace where people with disabilities work. This got us thinking about starting a chocolate manufactory where young people with autism work. The idea was born on paper, the essay was well done. Then we came across an advertisement from NESsT Hungary saying that if we had a good idea for a social enterprise, we could apply, and those selected would be given a training course to develop a business plan. We did that, we didn't win there, but NESsT brought us a sponsor who helped us get started. So we got a third of the initial capital and two-thirds from family savings. After two years of preparation, we launched in 2016.

You and your wife work together. How do you divide the tasks?  

I do the catering, the chocolate-making part, the chocolate-making workshops, and my wife is the manager of the professional programs. With the help of our professional staff, she develops the programs for young people, young adults with autism and coordinates the tasks.

„KockaCsoki” means a square of chocolate. Does it refer to chocolate only?

A square, or ‘cube’ as we call it, is not just a piece of chocolate. It's a label that tends to be given to people who live very rule-following lives, and autistic people are rule-followers, they like to live by a system, so the word ‘square’  is also a reference to autism, but for us, it's a very positive attribute.

Anyone who enters can see that this is a special place. But what makes it special? 

We are the first place in Hungary to make sweets, and we do it with people with autism.

We have created a community space in KockaPont (‘Cube Point’) that focuses specifically on people with autism, and we are the only one doing so so far.

Do customers choose you deliberately?

We have many customers who only find out that these chocolates were made by autistic people after they have ordered them. And many of them come to us because they know that we have people with autism working for us, and they prefer to buy their chocolates here, supporting a good cause. It's important that we offer quality products, using first-class ingredients.

How does KockaCsoki achieve its mission as a non-profit, social enterprise?

 Our aim is to help and support young people with autism to find employment and start working. We want to help them integrate into society, as well as introduce their world so that people can get to know them better. We are a social enterprise employing people with disabilities, and the income from the sale of chocolates, services, and the café is used to run our programs and events.

What types of work are people with autism very good at and what are they not? 

It depends on the personality rather than autism.

To know an autistic person is to know a person, not autism.

There are professions or parts of a job that they may not be able to do well in. We work with them in the chocolate shop, in the café, and in children's programs. Chocolate making is easy to break down into well-described, small steps, and they do very well in the chocolate workshop. We have a female colleague with autism who can manage busy children's parties, directing the children, even though theoretically it's an uncomfortable situation for people with autism. They also do very well in office work, which includes spreadsheets, stock records, and production diaries. Autism affects communication and social behavior, so they generally have difficulties in these areas. However, for example, one of our colleagues can deliver parcels to new addresses, or meet new people, the other can't. So is making coffee, serving coffee, communicating with customers. They love and want to work, they do their best to do well.

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Ákos Dénes - Photo: KockaCsoki

What do you do to educate, to raise awareness? Are there any good practices?

We go out to companies to raise awareness, and we have a lot of integrated programs - like chocolate making or other craft activities - involving young people and children with autism, but also people without autism. We see that they can work very well together, they get to know each other better.

We want to break down the stereotypes that surround them.

What programs do you offer at Cube Points and for whom?

On the one hand, we have a series of pre-employment programs for young people with autism, but we also have courses on independent living, trainee programs, career guidance, and, of course, employment itself. We also have an online job search program, in addition to programs for parents. Parents with a recent diagnosis can attend legal training, where they can get information about opportunities for children with autism, such as what they can claim in their situation, where to go in case of adverseness, including pre-school, school, further education, employment, and adult housing. In addition to the educational programs, we also organize leisure activities, integrated programs for people with autism, and leisure activities for parents. We also run chocolate-making workshops, birthday parties and our parents' club is popular.

Do you have experts helping you? 

Yes, we have a special needs teacher and a lawyer both of them are involved in both developing and delivering our programs.

How does the career guidance program help young people looking for a job?

This is a year-long program where we regularly meet six young people with autism who will learn about employment, jobs, and vocations on this course. Together we visit workplaces or we are visited by representatives of various vocations. During the school year, the young people get an idea of the labor market that will help them to find out what is right for them.

Let me point out here that very few places run such a career guidance program for non-autistic people, even though all adolescents would need it.

What is the "autism-friendly" environment that you have created here?

It is cozy and under-stimulated, with low lights and soundproofing to block out street noise. The surfaces and graphics are simple, there are no stimulating images or patterns on the walls, and the music is soft. There is also a library, where visitors can find everything from professional books to comic books.

The author is a student at the Ferenc Faludi Jesuit Academy’s journalism course.

The fort of Füzér

Two years ago, when I came here on an excursion in January the area was covered in fresh snow. The characteristic building is perched on a 500-meter volcanic rocky peak like a real jewel overlooking the village - it's no coincidence that it's one of Hungary's seven natural wonders. One of the most beautiful halls of the castle, built in the early 13th century, is undoubtedly the chapel with its stained-glass windows. In the cold months from the terrace of the building, you can enjoy a beautiful view of the frosty forests, snow-covered fields, and mountains. Open all year round, visitors to the complex can learn about the history of the Aba, Perényi, Báthory, Nádasdi and Károlyi families, and see permanent exhibitions (Discover the Holy Crown, the castles of the Carpathian Basin, the coins of Füzér, the furniture exhibition or the stone gallery).

The castle is believed to have been built by the Aba clan in the Árpád era, and its first written mention dates back to 1264. The castle was bought by Andrew II in the 13th century and was part of the royal estate until the Tatar invasion when it was donated back to the Abas. After the Battle of Rozgony, Charles I confiscated it and it became the property of the crown guard Peter Perényi, who, instead of taking the Holy Crown to its usual place, the Visegrád Castle, had it transported to Füzér and hid it in the palace or chapel for nearly a year.

The fort of Regéc

Through the oak-hornbeam forests, a small climb takes us to the serpentine path leading to the fortress. When you reach the fortress of Regéc, built in the 1200s, standing on a 639 m high hill, you will see the Regéc-Mogyoróskai basin and the magnificent panorama of the Zemplén Hills. Ferenc Rákóczi's son, Ferenc Rákóczi II, was raised here until the age of five under the supervision of his mother, Ilona Zrínyi, as a monument on one of the castle walls testifies. The castle, which was destroyed in 1686, has been gradually restored since 2003 and now offers visitors high-quality exhibition halls and service facilities. The site features interactive demonstrations, including how a cannon looked and worked, and what was the defense formation like according to which medieval castles were built.

The castle of Boldogkő

Boldogkő Castle stands on a huge barren rocky ridge - with its thick stone walls and medieval atmosphere, it's an instant hit. In the Middle Ages, it changed hands frequently, one of the last lords being Imre Thököly. It is often referred to by locals as the home of fairies. It is said that King Béla IV, fleeing from the Tatars after the Battle of Muhi, was hidden in his cellar by Bodó, the old master fruit dryer, who pretended to be deaf when the Tatars arrived. In gratitude, the king gave him land to build a castle to protect him.

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Castle of Boldogkő - Photo: Hungarian Turism Agency

The castle was built in seven years by the suitors of Bodó's seven daughters, and after the weddings, it was named Boldogkő (“Happy Rock”) at the suggestion of Béla IV, who said that the seven daughters, the seven fairies, were the happiest here.

Even though you don't have to climb as much in Boldogkőváralja as you do to the forts of Füzér or Regéc, you should still wear comfortable, sporty shoes! If you arrive at the right time, you may also meet historical figures, such as knights fencing with each other. The most spectacular feature of the castle is the Lion's Rock and, at the end of it, the 20-meter-high guard's hut, which can be approached via a wooden plank.

The Rákóczi castle in Sárospatak

This is one of the best-preserved late Renaissance buildings in Hungary, which reached its heyday in the 17th century, during the reign of the Rákóczi family. In addition to Renaissance features, it also bears Baroque and Romantic stylistic characteristics. It essentially consists of two parts: the castle and the fortress, built in the 16th century. The Rákóczi exhibition, which presents the life of the lord and the events of the War of Independence, is open to the public. You can also see furniture and clothes of the period, as well as candlesticks carved by Ferenc Rákóczi II himself. The five-storey Red Tower is worth climbing up to for the spectacular view of the River Bodrog, the town, and the rest of the castle from the observation deck at the top.

Károlyi castle, Füzérradvány

This beautiful building with its fabulous English gardens, Italian Renaissance, and early Baroque interiors is a real treat for hikers in Zemplén. The 140-hectare park has been a nature reserve of national importance since 1975 and is the pride of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County. The most distinctive part of the castle is the main façade on the eastern side facing the park, which has a central loggia and a thin, tall octagonal tower designed by Ede Károlyi.

The late 16th-century building, which is the predecessor of the present castle, was rebuilt by Ede Károlyi in the romantic style between 1860-70, based on the plans of Miklós Ybl. After Ede Károlyi's death, the castle was inherited by his son László, who, together with his wife Franciska Apponyi, decided to create an original Renaissance world in their home at the end of the 19th century. For almost two decades they collected Renaissance and early Baroque decorative elements and furnishings. László Károlyi's son, István, recognised the tourism potential of the castle, and the Castle in Radvány was converted into a luxury hotel, which hosted members of the Hungarian high society of the time between 1938 and 1944. The castle was recently renovated.

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Rákóczi Castle - Photo: Hungarian Turism Agency

Nádasdy castle, Nádasdladány

Nádasdy Castle is located in the heart of Nádasdladány, Fejér County. It was originally the small mansion of Lipót Nádasdy and was furnished with the most modern equipment of its time.

Comfort was ensured by air heating, gas, and later electric lighting, a network of speaker tubes, a sewage system, and a food delivery system on underground rails between the remote kitchen and dining room.

The most prominent room in the castle was the Hall of Family Portraits or the Hall of the Ancestors. Here the full-length paintings of the ancestors were kept. By the summer of 2021, the building was completely renovated, with a modern museum shop, a screening room, a café, and a museum education center on the ground floor. Digital technology gives visitors an insight into the history and daily life of the castle, they can try out the replica furniture and enjoy coffee and cake in the dining room with copies of period newspapers. If you feel like it, you can also take a stroll through the 20 hectares of English Park, which is full of rare plants in spring.

Andrássy castle, Tiszadob

This romantic-style castle is one of the region's most beautiful attractions, with its charming period interiors, its ancient park, and hedge maze.

It is interesting that it has 4 entrances according to the number of seasons, 12 towers according to the number of months, 52 rooms according to the number of weeks, and 365 windows according to the 365 days.

The building was designed and built by the architect Artúr Meinig, based on the ideas of Count Gyula Andrássy, in honour of Queen Elisabeth of Hungary. The model for the multi-towered building was most probably a chateau in the Loire.

Vajdahunyad Castle

If it's winter and we have to live with the cold, let's at least take advantage of the freezing cold and visit one of Budapest's most beautiful winter attractions, Vajdahunyad Castle, and the adjacent Városligeti Ice Rink! Vajdahunyad Castle can be divided into three groups of buildings according to the different architectural styles: Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance-Baroque. The main entrance is approached via the lion stone bridge leading to the medieval so-called "Hidaskapu" (“Bridge gate”) and the Hungarian Agricultural Museum. During the winter, you can often find wood stalls here where you can enjoy hot cocoa, chimney cakes, roasted chestnuts, and a variety of other delicacies.

This article was written with the professional support of the Hungarian Tourism Agency.

Dr. Zoltán Szalai, Director General of MCC, talked about the beginnings. The MCC was founded in 1996 as a family foundation with a few students in an apartment - but even then with grandiose plans and dreams. In 2001, the government of the time found the education program worthy of support, so the foundation was able to move into the building of the former workers' militia’s headquarters on Somlói Road. As MCC has always envisioned its educational work in the whole Carpathian Basin, the next center was opened in Kolozsvár (Cluj Napoca) in 2013. Then came the larger cities of rural Hungary for young students, Kecskemét, Szolnok, Veszprém, Pécs, Miskolc, and then Beregszász (Berehovo) in Transcarpathia. As a key milestone of growth, last year the foundation was established as a public interest trust, which can be run by dividends from MOL and Richter shares. Currently, they are working with 3,700 students in 23 locations in the Carpathian Basin, but within a few years, they want to reach more than 10,000 students in 35 locations, providing them with knowledge, experience, and community that goes beyond the scope of public education but is important and necessary for a conscious and responsible life.

Szalai describes the Foundation's strategic goals as follows: "The MCC's mission is to support the most talented students through a complex education that focuses on skills, professional knowledge, emotional development and relationships, from the age of 10 to the end of university and beyond. We want this kind of knowledge, which has been available in Budapest for a long time, to be of even higher quality, with full-time, excellent teachers, the best foreign visiting professors, available throughout the whole territory of historic Hungary, for anyone who wants to get more out of themselves than they can comfortably get in public education."

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Photo: Tamás Páczai

The core activity of Mathias Corvinus Collegium is therefore not just accommodation. Providing dormitory accommodation serves to build community, making it easier for students to participate in afternoon and evening courses and leisure activities without having to travel home. If they spend more time together, and the MCC offers useful activities, the community will develop more strongly in the dormitory setting.

The focus is on education based on talent promotion.

Courses are already being offered to middle- and high school students that complement traditional school education: languages, interdisciplinary areas such as music and mathematics or robotics, money management, internet use, health awareness and health culture, environmental protection, including the concept of creation protection - these are the areas that are only touched on in public education but which can capture children's interest from an early age. Or some areas are regularly left out of the public school curriculum, such as the last few decades of twentieth-century history, which history teachers rarely get to, and even then in vague quality. In addition to professional courses, there are skills development activities, a wide range of summer and winter camps, and many social experiences for young people who take part in the program free of charge. High school students are also helped to choose their career paths, so they would be able to imagine what they will study, for example, in international relations, or what they need to be prepared for if they want to become diplomats.

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Photo: Tamás Páczai

"It's a challenge, not only for us but for the whole world today, to combine the in-person and online possibilities " – Zoltán Szalai answers my question about the way forward. "This has been very important in the pandemic period but we also want to make it possible for students from Beregszász (Berehovo) or Sepsiszentgyörgy (Sfantu Gheorghe) to join a training course in Budapest. It would be also important that students who have been awarded scholarships to study abroad were able to join the work of the MCC during their stay in other countries. But I have just been told by the head of an American university that they too are facing the challenge of making it possible to complete a semester at their university from abroad, because thus they would be able to offer cheaper courses to students from the Far East, for example. Overall, I believe in in-person education, but as long as it makes sense, we need to develop our online learning opportunities."

Years ago, renowned professors used to come to give courses or lectures to students but today the MCC is staffed by renowned professors and researchers such as Zoltán Cséfalvay, Borisz Kálnoky, Zoltán Kovács, Sándor Gallai, or István Varga.

Distinguished experts who already conduct research at the MCC publish from here. "Much of the knowledge we teach is already produced here," says the director proudly. "Research institutes have been set up under the auspices of the MCC in areas such as migration research, climate and youth research, Hungarian-German relations, and the best international researchers and academics are involved in these, and there are always 15 to 20 foreign visiting professors at the MCC. It's also important that our students spend time abroad, gain experience, learn from the best - and then come home and use what they've learned. Fortunately, the opportunities here are getting better now, and many domestic companies and the public sector can offer the kind of perspective that a foreign country can."

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Photo: Tamás Páczai

We also talk about nurturing values. Zoltán Szalai is a fan of debates, as he says, after an exciting lecture, a heated debate with different arguments and opinions develops between students and invited speakers. "The important thing is for young people to listen to intelligent, good debates, where a range of opinions and interpretations are put forward, and to see that a well-prepared person with smart arguments is more authentic. This is appreciated by the young generation. The aim is to familiarise them with the most diverse segments of the world, the most important workshops of thinking, so that they do not receive one-sided, or didactic knowledge or approach. In Western universities today, a kind of neo-Marxist approach, the so-called woke culture, dominates education. This also defines the thinking of many university teachers in Hungary. Part of the university intelligentsia has taken on a kind of Western mainstream robe, but behind it, the aggressiveness of Eastern European, twentieth-century communism, which excludes all other ways of thinking and values, is still clearly visible. We want MCC students to be able to make up their minds on an issue, regardless of school, values, or upbringing. At the same time, MCC is characterized by basic patriotism, a healthy patriotism, and we try to educate young intellectuals to love their country and their nation, to take responsibility for the community, and to think about community as a value. That is why it is important for them to feel themselves in one community with the students of the Hungarian centers beyond the borders. In addition to Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) and Beregszász (Berehovo), our centres in Nagyvárad (Oradea), Szatmárnémeti (Satu Mare), Marosvásárhely (Târgu Mures), Székelyudvarhely (Odorheiu Secuiesc), Csíkszereda (Miercurea Ciuc), and Arad (Arad) have also opened. And the aim is to have MCC training in Vojvodina, in the Felvidék (present-day Slovakia) and even in Vienna."

The Director-General added that the old, often disused, and extremely dilapidated buildings, which are part of the national architectural heritage, will be given a meaningful function again in the MCC's activities, becoming residential and talent management centers.

They will be open not only to young learners but also to their parents, teachers, and the city community, as there are and will be publicly accessible community programs in every center. The Foundation will renovate, modernize and maintain these prestigious buildings with a rich history, rather than building lightweight campuses on the outskirts of the city as greenfield projects. Thus, the city also benefits from the MCC's activities, with the renovation of the Hotel Avas in Miskolc, or the Grand Hotel Aranybika in Debrecen, or the takeover of certain buildings such as the Officers’ Casino in Pécs, the Béla Bartók Cultural Center in Szeged, the old town hall in Zalaegerszeg or the Girls' dormitory in Szombathely. In Budapest, the extremely poorly maintained, energy-wasting, and historically-loaded center will be replaced by a completely new building with a garden that will also serve as a public park. The MCC is temporarily using the former Flamenco Hotel building, where we are having this conversation now. We are chatting in the Scruton Café, which has been transformed into a dynamic community space, displaying the personal objects and books of conservative thinker Roger Scruton, considered by many to be the most important contemporary British philosopher.

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Photo: Tamás Páczai

"Scruton visited our country several times, we knew and loved him personally, and he had great respect for Hungarians. He did a lot for British-Hungarian friendship, which is why the idea of creating a community space in his name was born. We have an excellent relationship with his widow, who also gave part of his heritage to the Hungarians. This is how Scruton's desk, chair, bag, some of his books, a large part of his paintings, his saddle, and riding crop were moved into the communal space. I believe that these objects also inspire students to not only spend their time studying within the four walls but in addition to their textbooks to be active in the community, to make time for a varied and meaningful leisure time spent in the community. Not to be houseplants, as we say. Finding my place in the world is a significant and important task of the young, finding your place and your role in the world, and the way you can become a responsible member of the community to which you belong. Sometimes we can draw more out of them by taking them to Dunaszerdahely (Dunajská Streda)  for a DAC (football) game than by teaching them more Latin between the four walls. MCC is strong in helping to build good human bonds, close friendships, and professional relationships in the most critical years. We are also an ally to parents in this." 

Képmás magazine is launching a new series called Public Treasure, in which Kata Molnár-Bánffy, the publisher of Képmás, talks to dedicated people whose successful work can be of interest to many, and is a Public Treasure, as the title of the series suggests: a common issue, something we want to take care of.

Dani, has Hungaricums Around The World turned out to be what you envisioned when you started the series?

Dani: Everyone has childhood dreams, we both wanted to be great travellers. We even found the World Travellers' Atlas in Sonya's childhood room. I planned the itineraries for the first three seasons, and even the half of the fifth, more than ten years ago, and I have more in mind. Of course, you have to be able to improvise when you don't get into a country, for example. It's one thing to imagine it from home, and it's another thing when Tamás Frei, On The Spot, or Michael Palin check in from somewhere.

In 1988, Palin planned to follow Willy Fogg's 80-day trip around the world, but even then he and his crew were not allowed to enter Saudi Arabia. So were we in Nicaragua, where the president's wife is vice president, or in Pakistan, where we were mistaken for Indian spies.

When the camera is rolling and we're smiling, that's just the icing on the cake, but you have to get there. We had the whole crew running back from the reeds to film, we had such bad food poisoning, we obviously don't film that kind of thing. There'd be no one to record it. (laughs)

Hungaricums are important to many of us, but the fact that you've based a whole series of programs on them implies an even closer connection...

Dani: In 2013, I came very close to the topic in the Kőrösi Csoma Sándor Programme, and I also wrote my thesis on the autonomy of Szeklerland at the Pázmány Péter University’s Faculty of Law. I realized that there are a lot of Hungarian relations in the world that we don't know about. At home, it is impossible to go out without seeing a foreign number plate, while travelling around the world we do not know Hungarian treasures and street signs of which we could be proud. There were those who fled from the Second World War to Venezuela with a suitcase and then set up a Hungarian House there, which is still maintained to this day. While there is a ticket system and war going on. Our crew wants to show these values to people here at home.

Sonya, you followed the previous season from the outside, but you were already working as an audio engineer on the spot for this one. What has this adventure given you?

Sonya: I was born in Brasov, my family came over from Transylvania in 1992. The feeling of being a Hungarian minority living across the border has been part of my life since childhood. Since then, I have been preserving Hungarian values.

It's an incredible feeling and a great learning process to meet Hungarians all over the world who join forces even 9,000 kilometres away from their homeland to pass on their language, culture and traditions to their children and grandchildren.

Such remarkable, exemplary preservation of tradition is something you don't often come across even in Hungary.

Dani: It is not the same thing, of course, that someone had an opportunity to leave or had to leave their country. Many people who did it by necessity remained in love with the country. We felt especially with Hungarians in the US that even a fourth-generation Hungarian might have received a romantic image of Hungary from his grandparents or great-grandparents, which was perhaps never entirely true, but they grew up with it. And eventually, they would even move here, even though they might no longer have any relatives back home. Those who emigrated in or before '56 are preserving a slice of their homeland, a slice of the perception of that time, which is perhaps worlds apart from that of today. And they might even be called ‘emigrants’ back home.

People should be made aware that citizenship, nationality and language do not stop at borders. You can be Venezuelan because your mother married a Venezuelan, but you speak Hungarian, you know a lot about the country and you tell your children to come to Budapest and Lake Balaton. They are our best diplomats.

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Filming in South America - Photo: HVK

I think you'll agree that it's important to make the younger generation accept this approach, so that they don't see it as an outdated attitude.

Sonya: That's why the series tries to convey our values in a slightly lighter style, to appeal to everyone from minors to the elderly. Just as patriotism is instilled in children abroad from a very young age.

Dani: (taking Sonya's hand in agreement) It's great to know our history. It is even greater that there are people abroad who teach their children Hungarian. And the fact that outside Europe, it reaches across generations is amazing! But I'll tell you something else. The Taita Foundation in Hungary supports Kenyan children, but also cooperates with Hungarian organisations abroad. Father Csaba Böjte helps Hungarian children from the Carpathian Basin, but along with Romanians and Gypsies. So the one who helps, helps everyone, but still few people help.

If the Venezuelan Hungarians have no water, who can help them if not us? This is also a kind of solidarity, and national solidarity can never be an outdated concept.

How much have you personally been changed by all the experiences you've had while filming?

Szonya: I have been enriched in every way by being able to see first-hand the love, friendship and the touching stories of the Hungarians living abroad. If it had been possible, we would have stayed in one place for weeks talking to them, but of course we had to move on. But even now I get goosebumps when I think about one father, for example, travelling 6 hours to take his child to learn Hungarian for 60 minutes and then 6 hours back.

Dani: As a child from Buda, I became more humble as I got to know the different circumstances in which people live. When you ask where the toilet is, and they point to a hole in the wall. Obviously they would offer you a better toilet, if they could but they can't... So you can smile about that, but you can also be grateful that they offer you their toilet. Perhaps the whole country should be sent on a field trip like this, to show people how much happier and more cohesive others are under those circumstances. And those who don't have all the material goods tend to be more willing to remain Hungarian. In affluence it is easier to lose values and become part of the masses.

What do you think makes national identity so important to these people - as you said, perhaps even more important than to those in the motherland? 

Dani: Many people ask why, once you move there, you should keep Hungarian customs. From Vietnam to America we got the same simple answer to that: because it makes them a better person. In a world of 7 billion people, your uniqueness will not come from Marvel comics, but from language skills and knowledge of cultures. They make you more tolerant, more interesting. Obviously, we are not able to go into them as deeply as if we read War and Peace, but we can go into them at a, say, “shortened version” level. And the viewer already gets more than without our programme: they will have impressions from many parts of the world. From places where Hungarians rarely film, and about things that are difficult to convey even in a film.

Szonya: The people we meet are living historical footprints.

And we heard from them what it was like to leave their homeland and start their lives anew in a completely different world. We could see the homesickness in their eyes as they began to shed tears when talking about Hungary. I have probably never seen a building as beautiful as the Hungarian House in Venezuela. Right after the first city view of Caracas, a huge red, white and green flag greeted me at its gate...

Dani: In Mexico, in Merida, they came to greet us putting aside their jobs and family programmes. For a family of five to fly home and back is not financially feasible. All they can do is read Hungarian stories, watch Hungarian TV and cook Hungarian food. Once they have had to leave or found happiness there. After communism, you can live wherever you want. If you stay at home that's great, if you go abroad and bring home some new skills that's even better. If you stay abroad, that's fine, just remember where you came from. That's what they do. Without political or any other kind of bias, they teach their kids a little bit of Hungary, even the weirdest ones.

Szonya: it is a very important point that regardless of their political affiliation, they unanimously consider it an important value that they are Hungarians.

Dani: And they find what suits their preferences.

Whether it’s Péter Esterházy, Sándor Márai or Albert Wass, it makes no difference. Nostalgia is also common, because everyone realises, wherever they move, that Hungary is beautiful. Americans in particular also point out that it is peaceful. You can walk down the street without getting mugged, and you can walk to the groceryshops, not just drive.

They see it as an island of peace, while we, here at home see it as a frustrated, aggressive place based on hate filled Facebook comments. In Mexico, instead, the line is hit with a sexual or alcoholic joke, and in America, there are superficial conversations about the weather because they avoid politics, skin colour and all that.

I don't want to send out a spoiler from season six, but how far did you get in the US?

Dani: From New York to Chicago and Texas to New Orleans. There, to this day, stands the statue of Lajos Kossuth across from the FBI headquarters in Louisiana, where he once spoke before a huge crowd. He was the second non-American to receive a statue in the Capitol Hill. What Americans know about Hungarians are: Lajos Kossuth, Ágoston Haraszthy and Viktor Orbán. Our two cameramen were also filming on Kossuth Street in St. Louis when a black guy honked at them and asked, "Are you filming about the ghetto?" They told him who the street was named after. He pointed a gun and said that it was the most dangerous street in the state, but thank you very much, now he can finally tell everyone who Kossuth Lajos is! (laughs)

Your mission is then not only useful to the Hungarians, but also to the world...

Dani: We should unite Hungarians around the world like the HuGo app does in the US. It collects all the Hungaricums: every Hungarian story, street sign, legacy, memory, Hungarian butcher, church, bakery. Because there are people whose grandmother was Hungarian, but they as butchers make Hungarian sausages. Or the biggest pastry shop in Venezuela, Danubio, is also Hungarian.

Perhaps there will be a renaissance of it, and Hungarians will also feel that Hungarian culture is cool in this form too. Because it can be sexy too.

Szonya: In the US, for example, little kids run around in T-shirts that say "I'm Hungarian, this is my superpower"... If you did that in Budapest, you would look suspicious, people would think you’re too Hungarian. But we were welcomed everywhere, and people were very happy that Hungary would finally get a little bit of them, or of the work they do for the survival of the Hungarian nation.

Originally you are lawyers. How much do you think your current activities, travelling and filming, will be your long-term path?

Dani: We want to start a family, but we don't think we will not be able to travel with a baby. It would be good imprinting for them, so we want to keep filming as long as we can. Travelling adds to us, both individually and as a couple. The show's message to us was the same as to the other viewers that we can get engrossed. It's like we're stopping time. Because there are always idle times on the road, when you can ponder things you don't have time to think about at home, when you're always in a hurry. I would also suggest that anyone who is newly married should set off - you don't have to go all the way to Venezuela, a tour on the River Tisza is enough. We've been on a pre-marital counselling course, but when you can't decide who's more sick to their stomach, who should go to the toilet first or who snores more in five square metres with five people, it's a sobering experience. And it brings you together on a level that no pre-marital counselling course can. The stories also bond you for life, "remember when...?". You can tip the boat over - or not - on a trip on the River Tisza, and you can tell your granddaughter that mum was so cool she even did that! (looks at Sonia, who smiles)

Hungaricums around the world can be followed on the following platforms:

The production website

Facebook
Instagram
 

When the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, besides all the Hungarians, the state also rescued Afghans who had helped the Hungarians in some way. The Hungarian Interchurch Aid worked in the Central Asian country for a long time. Did you also come across people who had to be evacuated?

Yes, we also cooperated in the evacuation. We had someone who worked for us as an accountant, another colleague was a doctor, he was in charge of the health programmes when we were helping hospitals, and we also had a project manager who was in charge of going to the site and managing and supervising the work there.

Since 2001, the Aid has been implementing humanitarian and development programmes in the country, which has been ravaged by decades of war. Was it a difficult decision to withdraw?

Wisdom demanded that we suspend our work there. Our colleagues there have also indicated that what is happening in Afghanistan now is desperate.

You have visited the region several times. Were you surprised that the Taliban came to power without encountering major armed resistance?

Not really. When I went there, I found that many of the people there didn't really like the way they lived. This kind of strong foreign presence was for them tantamount to occupation. Whether you like it or not, even though the militaries of different countries were doing humanitarian work, helping with reconstruction, some of the locals didn't see it that way. The consequence of this was that the whole system collapsed in an instant. There are great lessons to be learned from this, but I am not sure that the world will learn from it.

What conclusions should be drawn from the situation there?

That we don't have to reorganize everything, solve everything.

We cannot impose the structure of a country, its political system, from outside.

If we accept that Muslim culture is different and that we don't need to make it Western European, then maybe help can work. They do not want to conform to us, either in their own country or once they come over to Europe. And the Westerners see the solution in the need for even greater tolerance. I see a lot of naivety and a lack of sense of reality in this.

There are also several stories of the infrastructure installed by international organizations being destroyed by locals. What has been your experience - even with the best intentions, aid can get stuck in developing countries?

There is no need to bring infrastructure that they cannot integrate into their lives, into their culture. To give you an example, speedboats were brought to Sri Lanka with the intention to make fishing more efficient with these trendy motorboats. There were a few of these boats out at sea, and then people started fighting because whoever had the better boat caught more fish. In the end, they punched a hole in all of them and went back to their old way of fishing. It was the person who came up with this idea who made a serious mistake in this case! Nor should the infrastructure be built according to European thinking. You have to consult with the locals, get to know them, learn how their society works and what I can do to offer real help. You don't have to take three steps at once, just one at a time. We can usually work effectively where we understand the community. The experience of the last thirty years is that, in a certain sense, the Hungarian mentality is more accepted in Eastern Europe and Central Asia than, say, Western European or American.

What is the reason for this?

We do not want to export ideologies, nor want we change them. Besides, the Hungarian and the Central Asian are both cunning people in terms of acumen, and when we meet, we understand each other's goals better.

For thirty years you have been building society at home and abroad. Are you doing aid work with the same goals and motivations as you did three decades ago?

In our 1991 statutes, we set two objectives. One was to provide non-discriminatory assistance in humanitarian disasters, and the other was to look at the causes that create poverty and try to find solutions. If I look back over the last thirty years, I have to say that basically, nothing has changed, because these objectives are still valid today. We have been there abroad in disasters, we have gained a lot of experience and recognition, and here at home, we have come from spontaneous relief to what for us is conservative thinking in social work.

Is there a conservative or liberal approach to helping?

Of course! The liberal approach is to give aid as a matter of right, not to ask questions, not to request accountability, just to give what is needed.

The conservative view, on the other hand, says that if I give you something, you have to work for it too, not just me.

The assistance should not be one-sided, the other person should also be involved in shaping their own life. This principle of "something for something" is not clear in education either to everyone studying social work.

Why is it not enough to simply give what is needed?

If a person only gets aid, they will stay in poverty, they’ll lose their ambition, their sense of responsibility, and that's how their children will be socialised. This builds a bad future! What we are saying, on the other hand, is that one of the conditions for social aid is, for example, that the child should go to school. We have introduced a coin (‘tallér’) system, which means that if someone takes on extra work, for example, if they give their children extra attention, they receive a coin, the value of which is stated. For example, you can get new clothes, cinema tickets, theatre tickets on these coins. There was a mother in the Family Transition Home who said she wanted to go to the theatre, and it cost her 10-12 coins.

The soul of an aid organisation is its response to human fates. Can you remember the first human story that touched you in your charity work?

At that time we were not even formally an aid organisation, but we were already starting to organise. I spoke to Imre Kozma about it, and he encouraged me and confirmed the need for the organisation. We started to organise meditative music sessions in the Zugligeti church and in Csillebérc. One hundred – one hundred and fifty people came to the tent. One needed medicine, another wanted to call home to her loved ones so that her abuser would not identify her. But I remember many beutiful stories. For example, when the Romanian revolution started and we began to organise the first convoys, there was an international meeting in Beregfürdő, which was attended by aid workers. The trucks arrived in the

You have to feel the moment when you have to act.

It happens sometimes in this field that you feel that you need to act, but you can't. How often does the aid agency experience powerlessness?

Social work is characterized by pitfalls and failures because we try to influence the lives of others according to our own way of thinking, and the two views do not always coincide.

What is the responsibility of the social worker in this?

A social worker can make two types of mistakes. One is to be very permissive, the other is to start the job with a preconception and try to tell someone what they should do according to his/her own ideas. It is an exciting task to find the balance, because our goal is to help the other person get on, but we don't always succeed. There are times when you have to admit that mere existence is the only possible way, so you can help the other person to stay alive. In homeless care, we often have to accept the fact that we cannot make big changes, we can only preserve people's lives and at certain moments make them more beautiful and meaningful. The real challenge is when we are working with a family living in a family transitional home, for example. There are more than a hundred and twenty such institutions in Hungary, and one can be at such place for a year and a half. There, we often see the mother wandering between institutions, and the child is socialised in this way, not seeing the parent working. This chain must be broken! That's when we came up with our central project, which is linked to the municipality of Kastélyosdombó. Within this framework, we ask families if they would like to learn backyard farming, working with small livestock. If they do, we help them to settle down in a house that we have renovated.

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László Lehel - Photo: Jácint Jónás

Do you see the Kastélyosdombó project as a success story?

I do yes. I think it is a success story! There are a good number of people who have left the state system and started working. We evaluated their activities on a weekly basis, we had targets, we gave theoretical and practical training. We have set up a cheese workshop, there are greenhouses, and the people who live there are engaged in agricultural activities. We sell tomatoes and onions to local businesses and restaurants. We've set up a guesthouse, and we need people there to keep it tidy and supervise it. You have to think of this program as a farm: you have to feed the animals, you have to get up to do it, and you can't say it's too early to wake up! Some people have said that they can't get up at seven, and we have said that they should try. And when after a week he still couldn't get up at seven, it became clear that we couldn't help any more.

But there were also people who arrived at eight on the first day, a little after seven on the second day, and on time on the third day.

We need to bring back a sense of responsibility and ambition, and once we have done that, we will keep following up on the family. This project shows what it means to focus on development rather than distributing aid.

How has the pandemic affected the life of the Hungarian Interchurch Aid?

The role of digital education has clearly become more important, especially in segregated areas, where there is no possibility of children being able to access distance learning from a laptop. They didn't go to school to get the learning material, so we photocopied the assignments and put them on their doorsteps. The next stage in the process was to round up the kids and provide summer training to help them catch up on the curriculum, even on weekends. We try to be available in every way possible. Recently, there are more and more municipalities where we are trying to get close to the problem with our presence.

What does that mean?

Simple things, like wanting to know about every child born, to know their circumstances and to monitor when and how they might need intervention. This is a new approach, I have high hopes for it.

Doesn't it make people in need hostile to have someone come along and watch them to see when he should interfere in their lives?

Their first thought is always that an aid agency will come and start distributing. It takes a while before they realise that's not what it's about.

Or rather, it can be about that, but they have to contribute to it. First they are uncomprehending, then they start to do what they have to do to get what they want.

The presence of Hungarian Interchurch Aid is also strong in areas beyond the borders, with several collections for people in Transcarpathia recently organised. What target groups are you working with in Ukraine?

Our relief organisation has been present in Transcarpathia since its establishment, and in order to carry out the reconstruction work after the great flood of 1998, we opened an independent office in Beregszász (Berehove), which we have been operating ever since. We help with children's education, but we also work with the elderly. There are a number of people who do not have a supportive family background. For example, we know of a lot of families where the child lives in relative prosperity in Hungary, in those families the elderly are cared for. But many are alone, left to live from their terribly low pensions. This is also an area where aid is more common.

Where else can you provide help abroad?

Over the past thirty years, we have visited forty countries and have a permanent presence in some of them. We have been active in Afghanistan for a long time, but as I mentioned earlier, we are now on a break. In Iraq we have a sizeable staff, with three colleagues of ours as permanent staff and about twenty local workers. We are running projects worth millions of euros, building schools, repairing water and electricity networks.

These are the thoughts that malicious commentators tend to jump on with the question "Why don't they pour the money into Hungarian infrastructure, wouldn't it be better to have all that help here, at home?!".

In a time of refugee crisis, one of Europe's most important goals is to help people get back to their country of origin, and to help life there start again as quickly as possible. Because the situation in the refugee camps is desperate, there are people traffickers there every day, saying: 'Leave all this, I'll take you to Europe'. In order to help on the spot, we need to act quickly so that they see hope and want to participate in the reconstruction. This is also in Hungary's interest.

You are there in natural disasters, where you respond to acute situations, and you are also there in everyday misery, where you encounter many lives at-risk. You experience both euphoric and terribly painful feelings. How important is it to put up an emotional wall in order to be able to help well?

You definitely have to. To get too involved in the process would take us in the wrong direction, because then we would be trying to respond to individual needs, and that is not our job. Our task is not to bring conflict into the environment, but to try to find unified solutions that do not, for example, create jealousy in those in need.

In disasters, you get hardened after a while.

You know what to be prepared for, what recurring problems there will be, what the problem will be on the first day, what the problem will be on the third day and so on. In these situations, it is a serious job to put together the structure of the aid distribution, because after a week there is so much aid coming in that they cannot distribute it effectively. You have to organise storage, distribution, establish categories, issue certificates, for example, that one person's whole house has been flooded and another has 'only' twenty per cent. To do the job well, it is not enough to collect something and take it there. It hasn't happened to us, but there have been many occasions when clothes have been brought in and it turns out that no clothes are needed, but rather the collapsed shed needs to be repaired, and a volunteer carpentry crew is needed. There has to be a balance between love of neighbour, Christian commitment, knowledge, skills and craftsmanship, because if you neglect any one of these things, it makes the work soulless. At the same time, if you are driven by emotions, you will not have a professional aid organisation, because common sense is also very much needed in this field.

Sometimes jazzy, sometimes reflecting the sounds of the music of South and Central Asian peoples, are the melodies that Dániel Váczi's plays on the glissotar. The versatile musician has been playing the saxophone for three decades, and before that, he played the violin for many years. One day he began to think about how to make a wind instrument that could transition between pitches without steps (hence the name, which refers to the musical "glide", the glissando) and last year the Glissonic tárogató, also known as glissotar was born.

"The very first idea came to me while I was on the bus on my way home from Italy, and I was thinking about ideas for instruments on the way. This was in the early 2010s, and since January 2015 we have been working on the instrument with Tóbiás Terebessy, who is a very practical man. He's an industrial designer, he knows his way around wood, metal, and all kinds of materials, and he has a wide range of tools for processing. As we progressed with the process, we involved more and more instrument makers. From the tárogató side, master instrument maker József Tóth came in, Endre Pásztor helped as a flute and koboz maker, but several brass instrument makers were also involved in the process, such as master instrument maker Tibor Botlik. The octave shifter and the neck were installed by woodwind instrument maker Gábor Andréka, and violin maker Márton Faragó-Thököly glued the wood tube together from two halves” –  explained Dániel Váczi.

The designer of the glissotar also revealed that the instrument is made from a tropical wood native to Central America, amaranth, also known as purpleheart, which turns purple when it matures. The material is then oiled to prevent it from absorbing water.

Dániel Váczi recalled that after the first working experiments, he started searching for similar instruments on the Internet and found a drawing by Leonardo Da Vinci, showing two flutes with one and the other with two longitudinal slits in the tube instead of holes. Under the picture, he wrote: "On these two flutes, the notes are not played in intervals, but in the way we form the human voice. (...) In this way 1/8 and 1/16 intervals can be created, or any other pitch." The inventor was interested in this solution despite the fact that at that time such a microtonal approach was not at all common. Leonardo had not worked out a way to close the gap perfectly (he said you could hold it with your fingers, but it wouldn't work), and on Glissonic instruments this was done with a stretched-out, flexible magnetic strap.

The glissotar is most commonly played in contemporary classical music, jazz and folk music, but it is also worth trying it in all improvisational genres.

"In improvisational music, you can exploit the interesting effects that can be created with this instrument, but there is also a lot of interest in contemporary music. We launched a competition for composers and, to our great surprise, seventy-five pieces were submitted from twenty-six countries. These are one or two-minute miniatures, eight of which I played in a concert, and twenty-four of which we recorded and you can listen to on YouTube, on the Sonus Foundation website," added Dániel Váczi.

The creators of the glissotar have recently qualified for the finals of the Guthman Musical Instrument Competition (a competition for the world's most creative instrument creators), which will be held in Atlanta.

Torockó, about twenty-five kilometres from both Nagyenyed (Aiud) and Torda (Turda), nestled in the hills, is the westernmost Szekler settlement. The market square of the village of nearly 600 people is a unique collection of uniform, neoclassical-style houses in front of the equally interesting rarity, the ‘vajor’ (i.e. a multifunctional pool. Spring water flows in at the top, which is drinking water, animals drink from the long trough at the next part, and locals used to wash in the widening pool at the end), which channels the waters of the Tilalmas spring into the village at the foot of the terraced, majestic, mythical mountain of Székelykő. That's pretty much all that tourists arriving by bus know about Torockó, spending half an hour, or one night, at best, in the valley to fill their lungs with real fresh Hungarian air before heading on to Szeklerland or the Hungarian border. Of course, a lot can happen in a single night.

The novelist Mór Jókai only enjoyed the hospitality of the locals for one night, yet he chose Torockó as the setting for his famous novel ‘Egy az Isten’  (God is One).

An actual pilgrimage destination

The title of the novel is the creed of the only Protestant denomination founded in Hungary. Torockó was – as its inhabitants called it – the Unitarian Mecca: its wealthy ironworkers maintained one of the strongest congregations, and students from more than 200 Transylvanian settlements came to board in their own school. Torockó was a very wealthy settlement thanks to its iron mining and working industry, it had no landlord and its inhabitants were reputed to be very able to work and live. An excellent example of the latter – that is to say, that they liked to do things their own way – is the folk costume of Torockó, which was uniquely ornate and testified to great prosperity. The past tense is a testament to the fact that, although there are still women who make textiles, they can no longer produce complete costumes, and the village has also had a difficult period when it was threatened with destruction. During the communist era, the demand for Torockó's high-quality forged products disappeared, as the nearby Vajdahunyad (Hunedoara) ironworks was churning out iron: in the 1980s, one of Romania's largest metallurgical centres employed more than 20,000 people. Emigration started, and with it went hand in hand ageing population and poverty.

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Torockó (1986) - Photo: Katalin Varga / Fortepan

This is how the first tourists who came to the settlement after the change of regime found the traces of a vanishing civilisation instead of finding a strong, self-respecting Hungarian village.

To preserve and make preserve

The fate-turning change was brought about by young Transylvanian heritage conservationists and the large-scale heritage conservation programme they organised in the mid-1990s, which resulted in the historic core of the settlement being awarded the Europa Nostra Prize in 1999 and the Hungaricum in 2015 – the latter title was awarded for the first time in Transylvania. The Transylvania Trust Foundation and Torockó's twin town, the Municipality of the V. District of Budapest, have helped to renovate nearly one hundred and fifty porticos in the course of twenty-five years of historic preservation work.

It was not only the buildings that needed care but also the souls of the people who lived there – they needed the support to see the potential of conservation rather than demolishing old buildings. In their case, tourism is both an opportunity and a threat. The biggest threat to Torockó and its heritage is not its Rumanian population, for they represent a tiny minority (who have built two monasteries in the town in recent decades), but globalism and tourism, which is attracting increasingly poor quality visitors. And, of course, negative demographic trends: for example, the 30-person home of the St. Francis of Deva Foundation in Torockó is the reason why there is still Hungarian-language education in the village.

Children in Torockó are taught to love and appreciate their roots and their history – if they preserve them, they will experience that their past will sustain them in the present.

Playfully disciplined facades

The market square of Torockó is lined with uniform whitewashed neoclassical buildings with Saxon elements, most of them built after the 1870 fire. In the past, the typical Torockó house was a pine-log house, plastered up to the window, such a house was displayed in the Ethnographic Village of the 1896 Millennium Exhibition, between the houses from the Palóc and the Kalotaszeg regions. Most of the wooden buildings have now been demolished. The iconic stone houses that can be seen today are unique in that, in addition to the neoclassical ornamentation of the town's Unitarian fortress church, they also feature unique motifs on their façades, both as a testimony to the importance of belonging to the community and as a way of embracing their individual characteristics.

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Photo: Wikipedia

This playfulness mixed with discipline is a totally unique style – especially as the red roofs, white walls and green windows of the houses stand as a national creed to the tourists.

The beautiful old houses are inhabited by self-respecting Hungarian people, who are both warm and reserved hosts. If you're curious about the present-day inhabitants of the village but don't have the means to go on a trip, Máté Tamáska's 2015 book “Torockó felfedezései – A műemléki tér szociológiája” ("Discoveries of Torockó – The Sociology of the Historic Space"), which also describes what good conservation work looks like, is a good armchair guide. In short, preserving the past in a way that fits the challenges and processes of the present and becomes an inner need and a specific norm for those living in it, helping us to understand and appreciate the solutions of earlier eras.

Unconventional ways of survival

One of the most interesting aspects of the Torockó miracle is that the conservation works did not help the wealthiest, but rather those residents who would have had little means to carry out the necessary work. It must have taken great courage and insight to accept this in a culture where poverty was not seen as a consequence of changed external circumstances but was often attributed to laziness and lack of hard work. However, the preservation and maintenance of a cohesive settlement image were clearly in the interest of the whole community. The lesson is that there is no shame in accepting help. In fact, in the long term, this conservation-restoration renewal can be a great resource not only for individuals but also for the community, for example, in staying in the homeland.

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Photo: Wikipedia

So-called "guest worker villas", which are an invasive species that settle on the landscape from Romania to Turkey, are not built in this region. New, temporary structures are of course also appearing in Torockó: notably the tent camp of a recurring summer festival, Double Rise. The title of this all-round artistic event, which attracts thousands of visitors, refers to one of Torockó's natural wonders: the Székelykő mountain, which stretches north-south, makes the village have a double sunrise.

Once at dawn, and a second time when it emerges in all its glory from behind the huge rocky outcrop at around 11am, to the delight of late risers.

Who knows: perhaps, in a symbolic way, a new day is dawning for the Transylvanian settlement.