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.

This more than 22,000 m² repair hall and the associated central office building of Hungarian State Railways’s (MÁV) vehicle repair plant were opened in 1962. It was built to the designs of the railway company's chief architect, György Kővári, and bears the hallmarks of the era. Part of it, not coincidentally, is also an industrial monument, and in architectural works, it is the distinctive external supporting structure and its replicas on certain internal decorative elements (such as the door handles) that are often referred to. If the hall had been built ten years later “in the glory of socialism”, it would probably not be worth looking at today - but in '62, the building, with its unique size and function, was designed and built using thorough and modern technical knowledge from before the war. As industrial buildings tend to be recycled from the pre-war era, the competition for the redesign was a unique and exciting challenge in the world architectural community, with some of the most prestigious firms bidding for the project, and an American entry winning.

The winning architectural firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, was the designer of the famous High Line, a disused elevated railway transformed into a park in New York. Together with their Hungarian partners, they are now working to save as much of the current building as possible - including the light fixtures and the hall numbers - while at the same time making the space, originally designed for the assembly of diesel locomotives, suitable for spectacular collection displays, visitor reception, and research. A skywalk is also planned: the vehicles will be viewable from above via bridges at crane level.

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Photo: Tamás Páczai

The adjacent steam hall, built long before, is now the Eiffel Workshop of the Opera House, and its spectacularly restored interior houses a steam locomotive, as good decor as it gets. The future Museum of Transport already has a large number of railway trains, of course, and the collection is constantly being expanded with new items of museum value. We start the conversation in front of the 424, which we know from a Tamás Cseh song, but the hall is also home to the Árpád railbus, the Kandó - named after its designer, several simple so-called ‘Bobós’ and ‘Ghosts’. The latter is one of the latest developments of steam-powered trains and holds the record for steam locomotives, speeding at 160 km/h when powered.

But it proved to be a dead-end - at that time, in the second half of the 20th century, it was no longer worth developing steam locomotives. There was the diesel one - and there could have been the electric one, too, as evidenced by the electric locomotive developed by Kandó Kálmán, also in the hall, but its importance has only increased in the last two decades. Humanity has realized what it had not for decades, that this technology is the most sustainable. Today, Dávid Vitézy says, there is only one line in the vicinity of Budapest that is served by diesel locomotives, and that too will soon be electrified. Kandó is one of those Hungarian scientific engineers whose work was not sufficiently appreciated in his own time, and we can only see in hindsight that he was actually ahead of his time.

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Photo: Tamás Páczai

We also walk through the other buildings belonging to the large halls: the repair hall with the mechanic's pit may retain its present form and will be the restorer's workshop, while the smaller halls will house a restaurant and café. But the fate of the Cold War nuclear bunker, which was built three stories deep and could have housed over a hundred people, is still to be decided. These are all very exciting places, with spectacular roof structures, cranes for loading, crane rails in the air, mines, and an engine room several stories high, a museum in itself. The restoration and conversion of the building is just one of the tasks - the concept for the exhibition must be developed, the content is being developed and restored, and the collection itself is being enriched.

Vitézy says of the schedule, "Three years ago the government decided to save this building as the new home of the Transport Museum. We launched an international architectural design competition, the winner of which, together with the Hungarian partners, is now working on the plans to obtain the building permit, followed by the design of the building, which will be ready by the end of 2022. At that time, the next government in office will decide - hopefully positively - that construction can start. If all goes well, the new museum could be open by 2026."

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Photo: Tamás Páczai

Talking about the concept of the content, Dávid Vitézy describes a vision that goes far beyond the presentation of vehicles and historical memories. "This exhibition is about the interaction between society and transport. It confronts us with what we have created in the world in the last fifty years under the name of transport, with what promises motorization revolution started, and with what faith we started to reduce the railways. The freight train was a wonderful option in the 19th century, it was fast, cheap, and could carry large quantities. In the twentieth century, it seemed a thing of the past, we had eliminated the siding, it felt slow and cumbersome, and trucking was taking everything away. Today we are at the point where the EU's environmental targets are that half of the freight transport will have to be shifted back from trucks to rail again to meet carbon reduction targets. A modern museum is suitable to present the challenges mankind is facing in a realistic way, with this perspective. At the same time, it will have a strong local context, presenting the Hungarian rail and automotive industry, the Hungarian technical and engineering tradition and heritage, the development history of Budapest and rural towns, and even the future of transport in Hungary.

If we can do this, Hungary's new Transport Museum will be a global benchmark. Valuable pieces of post-war architecture are often forgotten, and it will be, in fact, it is newsworthy in the world that Hungary has the sensitivity to save this iconic piece of architecture from that period. Hungarian technical and engineering knowledge is an important part of our national image, our self-image, and it is also part of our vision for the future, we believe that Hungarian innovation has a future on the global maps. This is one of the reasons for creating a world-class tourist destination here.

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Photo: Tamás Páczai

At the same time, we also want to strengthen the local thread by physically connecting the future museum to the Népliget (People’s Park), creating a walking route to it. Népliget also has a piece in its history connected to transport: on the one hand, car races were held here, and on the other, the first underground trains were tested on a test track here until the underground track was completed."

Obviously, lessons from history are particularly useful for someone who is also concerned with the development of transport in the present. Speaking about the synergies between the two tasks, I learn from the CEO that the construction of a station at the Népliget station is already being considered in the development of Budapest's largest rail development project to date, the Southern Circular Railway. A third track is also being built for the suburban railway, which is currently passing behind the vehicle repair hall, and a stop is planned for the future museum, not only to make the "Disneyland of the railway industry" conveniently accessible for people from the countryside but also to enable commuters from Hatvan and Pécel to transfer here to tram No. 1. They will have to go through the future museum garden to the tram stops.

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Photo: Tamás Páczai

The good news is that those who want to see the hall will not have to wait until 2026. This summer, a temporary exhibition of pieces from the collection that have something to do with the place will open.

"We are standing on a site," says Dávid Vitézy with no little enthusiasm, "that has been used for transport purposes since there has been any activity here. I want that when the museum is finished, everyone who visits it will leave with the feeling that there is no better and more authentic place for a transport museum in the world..." 

We have a pretty busy life, but what should it be like with four children! Miklós is already in kindergarten. The nearest kindergarten in the district has accepted him, so he is in the same group with mainstream children, which has a very positive effect on him, trying to absorb the knowledge of the other children. In the last few months, he has learned to ride a bike very well, Grandpa has been practicing with him consistently every day.

How was he received at the kindergarten?

We did a bit of preparation, went and introduced ourselves to the parents. They welcomed us warmly, we didn't feel that anyone was against Miklós going there. The kindergarten teachers were also very good at preparing the children for his arrival. They explained to them that Miklós is developing differently and doesn't speak very much yet, although he makes himself understood very well through metacommunication. We think he is in the right place.

Are you for integration?

We looked at several institutions before deciding on this one. I was worried that in a place with a wide range of children with disabilities, Miklós would not be comfortable, it would be too much for him: not everyone would tolerate his slowness and this could lead to conflict, or he would not be able to manage other people's behavioral problems. We were looking for a place where he would be accepted and happy.

When he was born, I thought I would integrate him by any means. Today I see things differently, and the most important thing is that he would have a good time, that the world would be round for him.

In fact, it already is, he's a quite well-balanced little boy. We are now leaning towards him going to a school where there are other children with Down's syndrome, where he can make true friends. Because let's face it, the chances of him having a mainstream friend at the age of 10 or 12 and having an equal relationship are pretty slim. But we still have time to decide that. Before I had planned everything, but with Miklós I was forced to become more flexible. I had to accept that I can't control everything, that I have to be happy with what there is today, what works today, and not worry about what he doesn't know yet, or what will happen later. I no longer try to forcefully close the gap between Miklós and the mainstream kids.

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Miklós - Photo: Tamás Olajos

After Miklós, you decided to have a fourth child. Were you afraid during the pregnancy?

When I held the newborn Miklós in my arms, someone said to me: "Have a fourth child". "Actually yes, let's have another child," my husband Bálint and I said to each other, and then put the question aside. A new child is not a solution to the difficulties with Miklós, he still will be here and we will have to bring him up. But we agreed that if we felt the desire for a fourth child, we would be open to it. Admittedly, this desire came later than it had come in the cases of the second or third child, there were so many difficulties and tasks, but eventually, it came and we did not think much about it. We didn't screen for Down's syndrome specifically in the same way as we did with the others. When the doctor at the 12-week ultrasound said everything was fine, I went home happily.

I don't think it's important to have all sorts of examinations and tests during pregnancy, because we are not the masters of life and death.

Their reliability is questionable, too, as I know of several families who, despite having had a separate screening test for Down's, did not find out that the baby had Down’s Syndrome until after the birth. It is very good for Miklós to have a younger sister, he enjoys being better at certain things, and there is someone who he holds the hand of and helps. For the time being, he is still in the lead over Inez, who is one and a half, and that gives him a lot.

In the meantime, you have completed the Down Nanny training and volunteered at the Down Foundation's Fellow Support Service (“Sorstárs Segítő Szolgálat”). Why do you think it is important to help people in similar situations?

After the birth of Miklós, I received a lot of consolation and every comfort made me feel good, but the greatest help was when a fellow mother, someone in similar situation looked me in the eye and said, "Believe me, everything will be fine". Regardless, I freaked out and went through the whole grieving process, but I was able to cling to that sentence. Why would she say that if it wasn't true, why would she lie to me when she had been through the same thing? It was also a great help when we ran into parents in hotels or playgrounds who were carrying a child with Down's Syndrome in their arms. I could see that their lives were not turned upside down, they were going on holiday, relaxing and smiling in the same way. These encounters made me believe that we could do it too, that we wouldn't necessarily be unhappy because we have a child with Down's syndrome. My own example can help others in similar shoes, because it's not as if I, unlike others, have taken the obstacles lightly. I have struggled with my own demons, fears and defeatism, too.

Now we live a happy life with a Down's syndrome child whom I wouldn't trade for anyone else, who I love as much as my other three children! I have a degree in foreign trade, and in economics, I speak several foreign languages, but I consider my greatest knowledge to be what I have learned and experienced over the years with my family.

What were your geatest fears?

I feared more than anything that I would not be able to communicate with Miklós. I was also afraid that we'd become a family that lived on hold. The girls might suffer from having a brother with a disability. We'll go under because of this whole situation, we won't be happy anymore, everything will be hard and bad for us, we won't travel anywhere anymore, our friends will desert us and only parents of children with disabilities will be friends with us. None of that happened in the end. Today I am worried about something completely different than before, different difficulties have come into our lives. Things that can happen to anyone.

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Miklós - Photo: Judit Folly

Do you see yourself in the mothers you go to help as a fellow-mother?

I'm still very much at the beginning of my journey, I completed my Down Nanny training in the summer, I've only been a support worker for one family so far. Their story is different, we have many differences, maybe it was easier for me to accept the whole situation, but the mother's fears and worries were the same as mine. Most people don't have any kind of relationship with a person with Down's syndrome, so everyone concerned immediately starts to browse the internet, where we find the same sites. We read about when the gap between the disabled and the mainstream will begin to open, when they will start to fall behind, what difficulties they will have - and we will have the same concerns, the same questions. We also read the success stories, that there are people with Down syndrome, for example, who have graduated from college, who have become mayor, who are photo-modelling, or who are becoming actors, and we try to hold on to those. And then as time goes on, you grow to love and accept your own child, and it's no longer about how to make them as similar as possible to others. In a few years, almost all of your concerns will be disproved, even the health concerns, because they can treat and cure almost everything now. It was like that with Miklós, too.

Your husband, Bálint, also took part in the training. As a married couple, what has all this given you?

I thought I was going to go to the two-day training on my own and I could devote myself to it completely. Then I found out that it was actually a family program, and it scared me what it would be like, but in the end it was good for the whole family. Miklós met up with several of his old friends, and the girls made friends who have similar lives. It was also very rewarding for us as a couple to be able to re-tell our feelings, experiences and memories in front of each other, and that strengthened us, too.

Why do you think you have been given Miklós - and this life long task from God?

When we were expecting our first child, I told my husband that we didn't need to screen for Down's syndrome, God wouldn't give me a mentally challenged child anyway, because I wouldn't be able to raise him. I thought I could do a lot of things, but not that.

We had our two older daughters two years apart, we had no difficulties with them, they were even very rarely sick. When we moved from a rented apartment to a nice one with a garden, my husband and I remarked that we couldn't have everything go so easily in our lives, now we had to have some difficulties. When we were expecting Miklós, I asked God to give me some cool task to do, something that was just for me. After all this, we had a child with Down syndrome, I think it's obvious why.

There are scientists who want to prevent climate catastrophe by reducing fertility rates, and more and more people are listening. A few years ago, Prince Harry and his wife told the press that they would not have more than two children for climate protection reasons. You have three children, don't you think that your family's ecological footprint is too much for the environment?

I don't think so. I think it is important that we have someone to whom we can bequeath this world, and Hungary in it. The most important thing is to shape attitudes and raise awareness. I see in my own children that they have a natural curiosity and a need to protect beauty.

If this goes on, will there be a habitable planet to leave behind? How big is the problem, how radical are the decisions that need to be taken?

The fact that this problem is getting closer to any one of us indicates the urgency of it. Think of the forest fires in Greece, or the major floods in Germany and Belgium that we could never have imagined before. Extreme weather conditions have also appeared in Hungary. Climate change is a challenge, but Hungary and Europe as a whole have made great strides in identifying the problem, and certain programmes have been launched.

What are the goals?

We want to be a climate-neutral country by 2050. The aim is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the level that is needed or expected from us.

What is the biggest challenge in this?

We need to move towards sustainability without raising prices, and while maintaining the competitiveness of the industry. There could be solutions that would suddenly reduce carbon emissions, but they would have consequences such as no electricity at the socket. I don't think anyone would want that. That is why it is important to move forward in a well-thought-out way, to be aware of the possible consequences of measures, and to be prepared to deal with them.

To achieve this, we have launched an online social dialogue to seek the views of the Hungarian people on all these issues.

How does the circular economy model fit into this strategy?

The essence of the linear economic model is that the product is produced, used and then discarded. This process is most extreme in the case of disposable plastics, where the period of use is often only a few seconds, after which the product ends up in landfills. The circular economy model aims to break this trend and try to recycle as much of the valuable material found in waste back into the economy as possible.

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Attila Steiner - Photo: Jácint Jónás

So waste can be a resource?

Waste is now seen as a secondary raw material. I think this is important from a national economic and national strategic point of view, because this raw material is already here in Hungary, so it doesn't have to be imported at high cost. Rare earth metals are a good example of this. It became apparent during the pandemic too, that global supply chains can easily be disrupted, but if the raw material is already here in the waste, it can also help our self-sufficiency.

Which countries are good examples to look at?

Western Europe is a little ahead of us in this, but Hungary is not lagging behind at regional level. Fifty per cent of municipal waste ends up in landfills here, compared to eighty per cent in Romania, for example.

Currently we are working to reduce this fifty percent to ten percent by 2035. The legal basis for this is already in place and we will set up a new waste management system from 2023. 

What is the basis of the new system?

There will be uniform standards for collecting and sorting waste across the country. Now it is up to the municipalities, which form associations to deal with this issue in different ways in different regions. As a result, a lot of recycling capacity remains unused, and there is currently not enough secondary raw material of sufficient quality, even though it is being produced in the country. We want to address this.

Do operators receive support for innovation in substitute products? This could also be a cornerstone of the model change.

It is up to the market to define the substitutes, and all we can do is open up support frameworks for companies. We have launched a ten billion forint support programme to help finance this technology shift, for example for those stakeholders whose portfolio is largely made up of disposable plastics.

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Attila Steiner - Photo: Jácint Jónás

Hungary has also pledged that by 2030, ninety per cent of its electricity production will be carbon-free. To this end, renewable capacity would be tripled. What is Hungary's potential?

The achievement of this objective rests on two pillars. One is nuclear energy, which is carbon-free, and the Paks II project is also about maintaining current capacity. The other is renewable energy. In Hungary, like hydroelectricity, wind energy is limited, and where there is potential, there are already wind turbines. However, the sun shines a lot, so we believe primarily in solar panels and solar energy.

Today, solar panels in Hungary produce more energy than the capacity of the Paks nuclear power plant.

Biomass is also a good option, but it cannot produce energy on the scale of solar panels. There is also potential for geothermal energy, which could play a role in district heating.

Greening is a nice thing, but affordability is an important factor for the population. If everyone in Putnok, Kazincbarcika and Sajószentpéter had enough money to live with green solutions, no one would heat with trash. How can innovative solutions be made widely available?

Addressing this requires a comprehensive approach. The residential solar tender aims precisely to make renewable energy sources accessible to the most vulnerable. By installing solar panels in combination with heating upgrades, families can generate their own energy - and store it using a battery - which will greatly reduce their costs.

What is the role of society in change and what is the role of traders?

One of the key debates about the Brussels plans is precisely who will finance the switchover. We are saying that there are companies that use polluting technology, so they should bear the cost, not the families, because it would be a big burden for them. In addition, of course, a change in public attitudes is also important, and I am optimistic about that. I see that the new generation is now aware, and parents are often convinced or informed by their children about the need for a green lifestyle.

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Attila Steiner - Photo: Jácint Jónás

How do you pass this approach on to your children?

We often go out into nature and unfortunately we have found illegal waste several times, which has also disturbed the children. We downloaded the HulladékRadar (WasteRadar) app to our phones- which I recommend to everyone - took a picture of the pile and reported it. They were delighted when the next time the rubbish pile was no longer there.

Many people underestimate it, but small things like turning off the electricity or turning off the water are important. They have grown up with it, so they don't have to pay attention to it.

Composting is also useful and simple. In our gardens, we can just fit a small composter into which we can put our kitchen waste, and they will be happy to see that in time it will become soil and humus.

How can we protect the environment through our shopping habits?

It is worth knowing where the product comes from. I'm a big believer in eating locally grown fruit and vegetables, and since there is farming in my family we produce a lot of things at home. Obviously in the capital it's a bit harder to buy locally grown food, but fortunately there are more and more options.

How did you come across Rod Dreher and his book?

When Osiris Publishing asked me to translate it, I had already read the book. In 2018, I personally received a signed copy from Rod Dreher at a book launch in Hungary, and we stayed in touch. The publisher needed a translator who was well versed in Benedictine topics, had a theological background, and spoke English well, which is how I came into the picture. It is a good and important book, I was happy to say yes.

This book, first published in 2017, uses mainly American social examples to outline the process of dying and the possible survival of our Western Christian culture. What direction can it show us here in Central Europe?

Originally written for Americans, it charts a possible trajectory for Christians in post-Christian America. It is not an academic work, but the book of an educated, broad-minded, courageous, and honest journalist. It is not combative, but outspoken, it calls society's problems by name, and it is novel in its practicality. Few Christians today, I find, know, and dare to confess clearly the joy and power of their faith. One of the great virtues of this book is that it is based on, and radiates from, the experience of that joy and power. It is also a great virtue that the author does not think that anyone who does not think like him is stupid or evil. Moreover, it is a tribute to Rod Dreher's political acumen and knowledge of human nature that he warned his fellow Christians against placing too much hope in conservative politicians, and his wisdom in doing so has been vindicated by the lessons of the Trump administration. He says that the alliance between political conservatism and Christianity is far from perfect and that politics cannot provide a solution to the crisis connected to Christianity. Many in Hungary do not yet understand Dreher's political truth.

I really like the fact that Rod Dreher, as an American, has recently been learning and taking inspiration from Czech and Hungarian culture, from the experiences of people who resisted communism.

He recognised that the experience gained here could be relevant in his own country, as the soft dictatorship that is being established in the West today is in many ways similar to the former communist authoritarianism. It is good to be confronted with the fact that we conservative and Christian Hungarians have something to teach to the world.

Am I correct that Rod Dreher changed denominations twice: from Methodist to Catholic, then to Orthodox?

Coming from a Southern, formally Methodist family, he was practically a non-believer when he was a teenager. His conversion began when he visited the cathedral in Chartres, France, and was gripped by the faith that built that magnificent building. Later, his encounter with Dante's great poem also became a milestone on his new path to Catholicism. I know from him that the pedophile scandals in the American Catholic Church deeply shocked him and led him to convert to the Orthodox Church. It is true that, in retrospect, he says that if he had had a stronger and less intellectual faith, prayed more, and engaged more in acts of charity, he would have remained a Catholic despite the scandals. However, despite the change to orthodoxy, he still speaks of the Catholic Church with great reverence. In his book, he cites two Benedicts as his main role models: St Benedict of Nursia, the founder of the Benedictine Order, and Pope Benedict XVI.

The book advises Christian believers, whose values are being increasingly displaced from North American and European society in today's ideological "war", to retreat into their own communities, reaffirm their roots, their faith, and save their religious heritage for a new era. Are you not afraid that this will encourage the reinforcement of some kind of traditionalist, past-living, pompous, theatrical, and legislatively-minded Catholicism?

He has already received similar criticism from a Vatican cardinal, who sees Dreher's vision of the Church as contradicting Pope Francis' vision of the Church as a field hospital for the world, rather than a fortress. Rod Dreher's response is that only the best-prepared team should be sent to the field hospital. How can the church function well as a field hospital on the front lines of sin, spiritual warfare, and wounding if it does not strengthen its hinterland?

Withdrawal in Rod Dreher's vision of the future does not mean total closure, running away, or spurious living in the past.

It is no coincidence that I chose as the motto of my epilogue the apt words of the Lutheran-turned-Orthodox theological historian Jaroslav Pelikan: "Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living, and tradition is the living faith of the dead." As Christians, we cannot avoid tradition, since the term refers to "what is handed down to us". It is faith that we receive as tradition from previous generations, it is faith that links us to the apostles and even to Jesus Christ himself! There is no other way, no bypass to Jesus.

Did Rod Dreher choose the Rule of St. Benedict as an example and a guide for future Christians, alongside the Bible, because while Scripture is more an example of mission, of outward openness, St. Benedict's Rule prepares us for an age after the collapse of an empire? It is as if the Rule of St. Benedict gives practical advice on how to be strengthened in small groups, to save our faith for a renewing world, and then offer it to again this new world.

Yes, the author recognised the similarities between our times and the historical Benedictine era some time ago. As early as the 1980s, the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre drew a cautious but firm parallel between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the moral crisis of our world in his work After Virtue, on which Dreher relies.

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The Abbey of Monte Cassino, founded by Saint Benedict - Image: Freepik

As a Benedictine monk, I was very impressed by Dreher's thorough knowledge of Benedictine tradition and practice - he is in contact with a well-established Benedictine community - but he does not want to copy what the monks have done, but as a layman he appreciates it in the context of modern life. His book is a kind of secular reading of the Benedictine way of life. He does not merely select elements from the Benedictine tradition that are applicable, but understands the spirit of the whole and applies it to secular life.

I am happy to admit that this book has helped me in my ongoing personal conversion, in taking my own Benedictine journey more seriously.

It is a practical book, then, because Dreher has grasped the sober, one might say down-to-earth, Benedictine lesson that the Christian life is not just a collection of ideals, but a practical life, and that the two can only make sense together. Unfortunately, in America and Europe today, there is too much emphasis on theoretical knowledge, while the kind of practical wisdom of how to do something is being pushed into the background. In countries - including our own - where the majority of citizens do not want to do physical work because they consider it menial, I think this is an important message: for example, physical work is part of our humanity!

This reminds me of my childhood when I saw a sign on an old apartment building near my home: 'Ora et labora', Pray and work. Is it true that this is one of the mottos of the Benedictines, because it is important to balance prayer and work?

This is a relatively recent 19th century slogan of a Benedictine community, which then spread. In fact, one essential thing was left out: reading the Scriptures. Our Rule of St Benedict could be summed up more as 'read the Scriptures, pray, work'. We must listen to God's word, talk to him, and put into action what we follow as an ideal. The aftermath of the paedophile scandals also proves that the external and internal credibility of the Church is very much influenced by how its members live their lives.

People rightly expect us believers to make a clear commitment to our values, to proclaim them and to live by them. If we do not, that is a big problem. But if we do not know what we stand for, we cannot live by it.

How good it would be to have a Christian village community organized according to Dreher, which would also be a spiritual community! But how would we get along with each other in such a village, when today there are many disagreements even within spiritual groups? After all, in an online group of like-minded members, we can also fall out.

It is a problem that we do not agree on certain issues within our Catholic communities, even though the Church's teachings are clear in many cases, and also carry a profound message. They are either not known by all or are overwritten out of individualism. Even if we meet only on Sundays and do not live in the same neighbourhood, this is a source of conflict. The church hierarchy, the clergy, do not communicate well why these teachings are important. And on the part of lay believers, the attitude that "I'll decide what's good for me and what's right" makes consensus difficult. This attitude is incompatible with any communal, institutional practice of religion because it is selfish.

But how can the crystallized wisdom of the Church's teachings be communicated in such a way that we not only see them as a set of rules, not only obey them, but also inwardly embrace them?

Dreher is right about the problem that we live in our emotions, we make our emotions absolute, and it is difficult to argue against them. If I listen only to my emotions, I do not hear the teaching of the Church, because I act according to what I feel. Also, many people introduce their personal opinions in this way: 'I feel that...' You can feel many things, but that doesn't mean you are right. This is a very common fallacy today, it leads to selfishness and the community of selfish people is going to fall apart. I have also heard from religious people, "God speaks to me in my intuitions." But if not the Scripture but my selfishness is the measure of what I feel now, then it is a fallacy. Jesus himself, in the Gospel as well as the monastic tradition warn us that we can be tempted to a great deal of evil through our emotions.

"The Benedict Option" touches on sexual culture, which is much more than just our sexuality, because it actually reveals our whole worldview. Dreher writes about how we do not dare to pass on to our children the Church's teaching on sexual morality.

The result of the sexual revolution is a great indulgence, a great permissiveness in sexuality. This has made our whole society short-sighted, so we don't talk about its moral, spiritual implications. For example, we are hardly allowed to say that the evil and harmful consequences of divorce are suffered most by innocent children. The blatantly justified cases do not justify the widespread bad practice of divorce. You don't have to be a Christian to see this great injustice, but unfortunately many Christians are also tolerant towards it.

No one likes to listen to unpleasant truths nor takes them seriously, even though we all suffer directly or indirectly because of them.

Do you think that Dreher's guidance can become common practice?

In the United States, there is a greater tradition of self-organising small communities and civic initiatives, so Dreher’s message certainly falls on fertile ground there. Here in Central Europe, unfortunately, this is not supported by our inherited attitude of always looking to the higher powers, leaders and institutions for solutions. It can only become a practice if book clubs and think-together groups are set up here too, where the book is read and discussed, and the desire to gradually put its message into practice is encouraged. I see that people of all age groups are reading it with interest.

Dreher says we need "Benedicts", or leaders. But what is a good Christian leader like?

A true leader is more than a skilful communicator. They are virtuous, a role model, punctual and decisive. They are ready to ask and to warn. They must listen personally to those they lead, even if they cannot solve their problems. And, of course, they need to make the traditions of the Church and living by those in the community attractive. This book is a great encouragement to take our own traditions seriously, and sooner or later community leaders will 'emerge' who are committed and resourceful, and who are willing to suffer for their communities.

The precious spaces of the palaces were occupied by dusty storerooms of libraries and museums, and tourists arriving in buses could either queue up for the five-seater lifts up to the Széchenyi Library or risk the possibility of a twisted ankle on the deserted walkways. The surfaces of the castle's ramparts seemed to have been abandoned, first and foremost the Várkert Bazár (Castle Garden Bazaar), which is also an important part of the Danube panorama. We could have the feeling that we had a castle, a prominent part of the Budapest panorama, part of the world heritage, but it was falling into disrepair. It has no owner.

Of course, the renewal of the Castle is no small task, and not just in financial terms. It takes thought, vision, strategy, and of course determination, self-consciousness, and a lot of determination. For some time now, visitors to the Castle have been witnessing a period of continuous construction. A Hungarian old man, who emigrated to the West but has now moved back, is happy to see this, and regularly visits the castle from his country house to observe the rebuilding of the scenes of his childhood. He quickly thanks Gergely Fodor, the government commissioner, who guided us around the castle and introduced us to its history, from the 13th century onwards.

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The Royal Riding Hall under construction yet – Photo: Tamás Páczai

For that is obviously the time when the history of Buda Castle began, in the mind of King Béla IV, at the time period after the Tatar invasion. He decided to build here, by the Danube, at the northern tip of the Castle Hill. Periods of construction and destruction followed in succession. The period of the greatest construction was the period of Louis the Great, Sigismund of Luxembourg and King Matthias. It was then that the Buda Castle became a significant place, this was its first golden age. After the Battle of Mohács and the conquest of Buda, the Turks took control of the area, and the Pasha of Buda settled here, establishing a city centre by demolishing churches or converting them into mosques. After the expulsion of the Turks, large-scale reconstruction began again under Queen Maria Theresa, with which the Hungarians hoped to impress the Habsburg monarch by encouraging her to spend more time in Buda. But even after that, the Habsburgs did not make much use of the imperial centre. During the reform era, many new functions were installed here, from monastic orders to an observatory.

During the 1848-49 War of Independence, the palace was severely damaged and partially burnt down. In the era of passive resistance, the ruins of Buda, a reminder of the bloody defeat of the War of Independence, were left spectacularly untouched - the only improvement was the erection of a statue of the bloody-handed Hentzi on Dísz Square. After the Compromise of 1867, relations with the Habsburg rulers were settled, and the period of construction could begin again. And on quite a scale: it is said that Budapest was the second fastest growing and developing city in the world at the time, after Chicago. The Castle Hill was not left out of this huge development.

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Gergely Fodor Government Commissioner - Photo: Tamás Páczai

Miklós Ybl was asked to enlarge the Buda Castle Palace in 1889, and he himself appointed Alajos Hauszmann, the eponym of the present-day reconstruction programme, as his successor. In about 10 to 15 years, by 1905, the northern wing of the palace and the numerous buildings attached to it, the Royal Riding Hall, the Main Guard, the Stöckl Staircase, the southern and western gardens were completed. The Castle became beautiful and majestic, the crown jewel of the Monarchy in its heyday.

"We would like the history of the Buda Castle to have ended at the turn of the century," says the government commissioner with a half-smile, "but unfortunately the Second World War came, and Nazi Germany declared Budapest a fortress that had to be defended at all costs from the conquering Russian army. Instead, they wanted to save Vienna from destruction. We now know that they succeeded in neither." The problem of the badly damaged Buda Castle was neither spat out nor swallowed by the communist authorities, as the reports of the Central Committee attest. Finally, on the suggestion of a delegation of Polish architects, an attempt was made to restore and preserve the Castle's Queen Maria Theresa period appearance - thanks to which at least some of the early architectural monuments have been preserved. Because everything else was destroyed. In many cases, after decades of delay, the damaged buildings were not repaired, but blown up and demolished. Communism did more damage to the Castle than the war.

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Parts of the Royal Riding Hall dedicated to catering – Photo: Tamás Páczai

After the change of regime, the northern side of the Várhegy started to develop nicely, but the palace quarter remained untouched, with neither money nor will. It was the first Orbán government that decided to renovate the Sándor Palace, and the President of the Republic moved here during the next government. It was the next Orbán government that started and completed the renovation of the Várkert Bazaar.

"We regarded this as a kind of model project," continues Gergely Fodor, as we walk around the current construction sites, "We needed a successful project to experience that it is possible to restore an area that has been neglected for decades to its former glory and to give it back to visitors. That's how the renovation of the Carmelite Monastery, the Main Guard, the Matthias Fountain and the Riding Hall were completed."

The government commissioner and the National Hauszmann Programme he leads have a 12-year plan, the first third of which is due to expire in 2022. The basis of the plan is the state of the Castle in 1905, its last heyday.

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The Royal Riding Hall: The most beautiful event hall of Budapest – Photo: Tamás Páczai

During our walk, the biggest construction work is underway in the south connecting wing of the palace, the reconstruction of the St Stephen's Hall, a very special and legendary historical space of the palace, which was (and will be) the pinnacle of Hungarian craftsmanship. The works in and around the Csikós gardens are planned to be completed in autumn, after the formal opening scheduled for 20 August 2021.

This year, work will begin on the renovation of three other important sites: the former headquarters of the Red Cross Society on the corner of Dísz Square, the General Headquarters designed by Mór Kallina and the former palace of Archduke Joseph, a demolished building on the Taban side of St George's Square. The latter was allowed to fall into ruin for purely ideological reasons during the decades of communism, in the spirit of "erasing the past for good": it was used as a workers' hostel, then rented out for film shoots, and finally blown up in 1968 - although experts say it would have been easier to rebuild than to make it disappear.

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Complete renewal of the St Stephen's Hall – Photo: Tamás Páczai

Gergely Fodor sees his and his colleagues' task as an opportunity to make up for what previous generations have lost. He sees it as a kind of historical necessity that we should now have another period of building after the destruction and devastation.

"How shall we imagine this complex work?" - I ask the Government Commissioner. "We are working along a well-defined plan. The legal status of the sites had to be sorted out, a unified ownership structure had to be established. We had to create a functioning organisation of excellent professionals who would not only manage the construction works but also run the whole site. We have a large team of gardeners, for example, with whom we have tried to make these spaces liveable and enjoyable through landscaping, creating wildflower meadows and benches in the areas visited by tourists. Since this is not a conventional real estate development, but rather historical reconstruction of the Castle, we have prepared historical and scientific documentation for each building. A team of experts is digging up a wide variety of bills of lading, invoices and colour samples for an authentic reconstruction. From the latter, we know, for example, what exactly the famous Hauszmann green was like, which, for example, appears in many interior design elements in the Riding Hall. At the same time, we also have to take into account 21st-century aspects appropriate to the renewed functions - for example, we have to ensure accessability, and of course the interior of the Main Guard is now designed differently than it was 100 years ago, since it is no longer a puritan barrack building but a café and restaurant."

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There is also something to see in the Lion Courtyard – Photo: Tamás Páczai

As we walk among building materials, machines, planks and scaffolding, Gergely Fodor is greeted by craftsmans here and there. From the conversations, it is clear that for the craftsmen working in the St. Stephen's Hall - whether they are making the tiles, the chandelier or the woodwork - this work is a great honour, one of the pinnacles of their careers. The value created here is hard to quantify.

In psychotherapy, we are told to learn to be in solidarity with ourselves, to understand and accept our past, and to be bravely proud of what we have a reason to be proud of. This can be true not only for individuals but also for communities. Such a community is a nation. In restoring the Buda Castle to its turn-of-the-century heyday, we are part of this therapeutic process. 

Why visit the Castle? 
The St Stephen's Hall and the southern connecting wing of the palace were opened on August 20th. 
You can also visit the exciting interactive exhibition "The Hauszmann Story" in Building A. Here you can have a coffee and a pastry in the restaurant next to the also renovated Matthias Fountain in the Main Guard House. And, of course, you can check on the progress of work at the other sites listed in the article. And if you want to take part in a guided tour, we recommend the website budaivarsetak.hu, where you can sign up for thematic, very informative guided tours of various sites in the Castle.

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.

I knew young people who chose abortion for this very reason, but I knew I couldn't do it, even though I was ashamed. For three days my mother cried every time she saw me and begged me to get rid of the problem. And my dad wanted me to think through all the possibilities before I decide. I went to a Catholic school where I couldn’t stay after the pregnancy started to show, so I moved to the school for single mothers where I was the oldest… The average age was thirteen. I talked to those who had an abortion and also those who kept their babies. I couldn't find one who chose adoption. One day, when I had no one to turn to, I cried out to God for my grief. As I was driving down a hill I heard Him speak to me a Bible story I did not know. The one of Hannah. God encouraged me with that story showing how Hannah dedicated baby Samuel to Him as she gave him to Eli the priest to raise. I knew then that in adoption I was gifting my baby to God and other parents to raise as their own. I felt I could trust the Lord, He could help me find the right parents because I wasn’t ready to raise a child yet.

I wished her comfort and safety.

I stopped drinking and using drugs immediately, cut off contact with my social circle, and spent most of my time with my family. I was given a new chance by the Lord and it woke me up from my life.

I did not have the opportunity for open adoption under the laws of Michigan at the time, so I could only select a profile for my daughter’s prospective adoptive parents. I knew her mom would be a housewife who had adopted a son six years older with her partner. I chose them, from then I had a wonderful pregnancy. I loved to feel my little girl inside, I always talked to her, I wrote her letters. I kept a diary of my feelings of good and bad. It wasn’t easy to miss out on all the community events my fellow students attended, yet I got on the right life path at the time. I left behind my past forever, which also included sexual harassment, a rape suffered in childhood from someone within my wider family. I lived with this secret, and although my parents loved me, I did not dare to tell them because I had been threatened. I looked ahead, I was only scared when a developmental disorder was found in the little one, but then it turned out that there was no mental illness, just a growth disorder. If there had been any serious trouble, I would have kept her and brought her up, I could not have expected anyone else to raise her.

My little girl’s dad was interested all along, but I couldn’t let him get too close because my old lifestyle would have returned with him. Until the signing of the adoption papers, I was a little afraid of claiming the child as his own, I intended much better conditions for her. After she was born, the people in my environment did not want me to see her, saying it could hurt me, but two days later I turned eighteen so I could decide for myself. She was still very small, just over two pounds, and I could hold her in my hands every day for 17 days, feeding her, praying for her. I took photos, took care of her until they took her away.

It was hard to let her go, it was hard to do something with my empty arms afterwards…

Then I went back to school and told the others what I had experienced, I showed them my diary and photos. I said I didn’t give her up for adoption because I didn’t want her, but because I wanted the best for her.

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June Blanshan

For the past thirty years, I have raised my second daughter, born six years later, she knew she had a sister I had given up for adoption. For 11 years, I have completed an international mission in South Africa to protect life through sharing my story with others. During one of the trainings, I realized that I am also life-giving because I chose life for my child, with whom I have always wanted to make contact, I just didn’t want to disturb her life. Eventually, I found my official way to get her a letter, letting her know that she was not born against my will, but I did want her. And look at the miracle, 32 years after I had to let her go from the hospital, we were able to meet face to face. She replied to my letter, and when I returned from Africa to the States, I met her, her husband, and my one-year-old granddaughter.

When I first touched her face again, I swear, it had the same feeling as before.

I also gave her my diary and my photo album so she could look at our time together in the hospital and then I got to know the family raising her a few weeks later. Unfortunately, her mom was no longer alive, she died when my daughter was 13 years old. Her dad showed me photos of how she grew up, we talked about why I chose adoption. Since then, we have been part of each other’s lives again for about six years, my daughter calls me a mom, I was able to be present at her wedding and at the birth of her second child, her first little daughter, both were important events in her adult life. Looking back, I didn’t regret what and how it happened because I know my daughter got the best, and I trusted the Lord to take care of her properly. Over the years, I worried a lot, I prayed, I thought my arms were so empty… And when I got the letter in which she let me know she was okay, she had someone she loved and even had a child, well, that day I… Indescribable, what I felt.

I was raised religiously, but I made a lot of mistakes, and I was aware of that. I only really got to know Jesus around the age of 30, but it all started the moment I was able to cry out to God.

Then, through Hannah’s story, he made me understand what my mission was, I felt the peace that helped me through everything. Later, I could write and tell my daughter that I had chosen her parents to raise her in a way I wouldn’t have been able to do at the time, but I loved her all along, I was with her. God saved my life through my daughter. If I hadn’t got pregnant that time, I don’t even know where I would be today. Many people think a mother will give her child up for adoption because she doesn’t love her enough, even though in many cases the exact opposite is true. I hope people accept that adoption can also be a manifestation of love – along with giving someone the miracle of becoming a parent who otherwise would not have a chance.’

June Blanshan is today Director of International Ministries of LIFE International, an American organization for the protection of life. Her above story was recorded and written by Adrian Szasz dr.

Contact details of LIFE International's partner organization in Hungary:
Shout for Life Association
www.kialtasazeletert.org
www.terhessegkozpont.hu
24-hour helpline:
+36-70-225-2525

I was approached by several people who wanted to make a film about Zsolt's life, but luckily none of them materialised. I didn’t like the earlier concepts, but we resonate with director Sándor Csoma and think along similar lines. We both feel it a fateful encounter, the way God brought us together. There are no surprises in the film, everything was agreed with me. It is important for both of us that the story is of value to others.

How does it feel to see the actors in your own clothes, with your personal pieces of equipment?

It’s been eight and a half years since Zsolt's death, I have come to terms with his loss. What's most interesting is that Zsolt Trill, who plays my husband, looks very much like him, and there's another woman in my dress next to him (laughs). It's strange to look at a situation we were in, but it adds to the authenticity of the film.

I admire your selflessness in cheering on the mountaineers. Most recently, Csaba Varga returned from Kancsendzönga. Isn't life unfair to give others the joy of returning home, something that you could not have?

It is a complex issue. Climbers essentially do not compete. It doesn't matter who reached the top first. They reached it, and that's all that counts. On the other hand, everything changes, and it's great if others can do it, can experience it. I met Csaba Varga at Zsolt's climbing camp, where he spent only two days. We found out later that he became a climber because we had such an impact on him. These are experiences, impulses that make the sympathy even stronger. It's especially good if a person for whom Zsolt is a role model reaches the top. It’s a kind of continuation.

Life is like that, every moment something passes and something is reborn. For those of us who are here, our goal is to work on the continuation.

Three times you could scan the world from eight thousand meters. What is it like to experience heights and depths as a climber and in life?

Mountaineering is like getting a cancer diagnosis. You have a chance to survive, and you have a chance to die. It makes you think about what life is worth. Normally, it's the person who gets the diagnosis who thinks about it. The mountaineer is running into it voluntarily. On a mountain, especially an 8,000m mountain, we feel the fragility of life, the value of a human being. Among the highest mountains in the world, we are surrounded by enormous natural forces. We experience how great the Creator must be if the created world is so vast. Both depth and height are present, at the same time in the life of the climber. I am vulnerable, and as a believer, I feel I must rely on God because there is no other. Just as the horizon narrows in a valley between mountains, so too in life there are situations like this. For me, I was able to come to terms with the loss of Zsolt when I buried him. Usually, the funeral is the beginning of grief, but for me it was the end of letting go. It was like coming out of the water. I experienced everything opening up and having perspective again.

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Zsolt Erőss on a mountaintop

What was your perspective when everything was falling apart?

When news came that he was missing, reporters asked me how I was cheering for my husband. It was my task, as the wife, to pronounce that he had died. It was not only that they did not understand me, I also had to hold up.

When Zsolt lost his leg, I experienced what the media is like. It loves two things: blood and tears. Zsolt did not give the media the pleasure of seeing blood, and I did not give it the pleasure of seeing tears.

I put a wall around myself and didn't let the feelings in. I worked on this with my psychologist for a year, and it took another year before I could allow myself the pain. Unfortunately, there is no getting away from it; there is no recovery until there is facing the pain. Then the healing can begin. The perspective was the foundation we started. I had to mold myself and Zsolt together, and it was good to see that we were united by the shared set of values.

You have heroic strength for difficult moments. Did you inherit it or did you consciously work on it?

I think I might have inherited it. I've experienced in my life before that there are difficult moments. I have always known exactly that I do what I must in the present and later I would look back and see how difficult it was. Somehow I can't allow myself to fall apart, I persevere. That's probably why I became a mountaineer. A mountaineer can never fall apart in a critical situation. Once we arrive at the safe base camp, we can stress and talk it out there, but for now, we have to do it and that's it. Somehow it's an internal thing. I suspect that my Swabian ancestors who left the Swabian homeland went with that mentality.

So you didn't even take the time to ask yourself the why and the excruciating "what if..." questions?

Oh, of course, I did. Going through the events in your head, as if it was a movie, is very typical of a mourning process. I went through it eight hundred times, but I couldn't find a version in which Zsolt could have survived. It's important to go through it, but you need a psychologist who will say once, 'OK, you've been dealing with this for weeks now, dear Hilda, you should stop. The problem is that this film always has the same ending'. And that was enough for me.

If you don't have one person to stop you, you can spend a lifetime listing the whys. For me, there were no more whys. Some things don't get answered, but you have to be able to accept that.

As a mother, you not only had to come to terms with yourself, but you also had to help your children do the same. How could you help them in doing so?

My daughter was four years old at the time, she was also seeing a psychologist. I tried not to change our lives; I played with her as I had done before. It was important that she would not be treated as the poor little orphan girl in kindergarten. She still lives with his absence but my one-and-a-half-year-old son didn't even notice it, there seems to be no trace of it in him. For him, his mother was there both before and after. Because we talked about it and managed to come to terms with it, there is no taboo in the family. For years my daughter has asked me what daddy would do if he was here.

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Hilda Sterczer with her children in Katalinpuszta in 2019

Are they also attracted to the mountain, or do they think about it with fear?

They are poor "underprivileged" children because I always loved being in the mountains, even after Zsolt's death. In the summer of 2013, I promised myself to go camping in the Alps. I took my four-year-old and one and a half-year-old and took them camping and hiking. For me, it was always a way to relax. To this day, on holidays we go to Austria and the Tatras, and my son goes uphill so fast that I can't keep up with him. I'm taking him to wall climbing training today because he loves to climb walls.

Do you consider yourself a contented, happy person?

Very much so. The problem is that we can't appreciate what we have until we lose it. That's how it works for some reason. I am very grateful to God for bringing me out of the depth and teaching me to see the world differently. My fiancé and I have been together for four years and I see his positive qualities much better. I can appreciate my children and life more.

You had to experience the depth to appreciate what is really important. We always seem to reach the heights from below.

When I get to the top, I look around and think I want to climb that and that, too. When I reach something with the foundation, I'm already thinking of new plans. I'll get excited again and again, and then it all comes crashing down on me.

I realized that I need peace, and that I can only see the depths when there is peace. I was looking for that peace in mountaineering.

On the mountain, there is peace and self-reflection. This is something that is sorely lacking in the world. Everyone wants to reach high, but the truth is that there is no life at the top. Life is not really there, it is in the base camps.