Why did you choose this relatively narrow field of gynaecology?
“Prior to the birth of my first child I, too, suffered from endocrinological difficulties. As a gynaecologist, I met several patients who either had endometriosis or could not conceive due to other hormonal problems, which is why I began to immerse myself more deeply in the subject. Then when I experienced what fantastic results could be achieved with the precise observation of hormones, the biological cycle and follicular development, one might say I was ‘sucked into’ the field.”

Where we are now, the Semmelweis University Assisted Reproduction Centre, is a brand-new section. Who can come here for help?
“This clinic was founded so that as many wanted child as possible could be born, and as a place where men and women struggling with infertility could find help. The complex set of examinations is state financed; we use the very latest 3D technology to examine the anatomy of the uterus, we check the hormonal functioning of all the key organs, if necessary the immune functions, the coagulation system, indeed even genetic factors. We apply the most up-to-date methods when examining the male partner, too, and there is the chance to have an immediate consultation with our andrologist. We recommend free psychology screening for all our patients, indeed, we conduct any necessary treatment here. Our dietician is on hand for consultations with anybody who needs her. These somewhat costly procedures, insemination treatment and IVF therapy are fully covered by the state.”

Not long ago you gave a TEDx talk which revealed some astonishing data: over the past 10 years, the number of couples turning to fertility clinics for help has tripled. What do you think is the reason for this drastic increase?
“The single biggest problem is pushing back the time couples start thinking about having a family. The number follicles in the ovaries is genetically predetermined at birth and as one ages, their number constantly declines. Parallel with this we see a decline in the quality of ovum, which increases the risk of abnormalities and miscarriage. The fertility of men has also deteriorated a lot in recent times, and less is said about this.

“It is a common myth that infertility is basically a women’s problem although the statistics show that childlessness can be traced back virtually 50:50 to men’s and women’s bodies.”

How do men take this?
“Very hard, frequently worse than women. It can even be difficult to persuade some to take a sperm examination. They experience it as a personal failure, they feel that their masculinity is in question when they have been unable to fertilize their partner. In a normal case, for women 40 is the ‘magic’ number, and for men after 50 is when the fertility of sperm begins to decline at a faster rate.”

What else affects fertility?
“Lifestyle. Without doubt, a sedentary lifestyle and obesity reduce the chances of pregnancy. Instead of or alongside dieting, I would recommend everyone wanting to have a child to participate in active sport for one hour three times a week because this has been proven to have a beneficial effect on fertility. Of course, it’s not good either if someone is too thin, just as if they are too fat because for women in these cases menstruation may be missed and thus there is no follicular maturation. From the point of view of sperm, it is better if men swap overly tight trousers for a looser fit, and around the time of planning a family it is well worth giving up regular visits to the sauna hot baths.

“Smoking is the principal enemy that ruins the quality of sperm and ovum.

“On top of this, women who regularly smoke find they enter menopause two to three years earlier and this harmful addiction clearly damages the chances of a successful outcome to IVF. The psychological factor similarly is of massive significance, that is, what sort of stressed state couples wanting children are in.”

The ideal situation is when a woman is able to give birth to all the children she and her partner want when she is in her twenties, but latest by the age of 35. However, these days very many people only discover ‘Mr or Mrs right’ when they are over 35. What advice would you have for them?
“If it is just a question of whether or not to ‘live life’ together, to travel for another three years before having a baby, I would suggest they decide to have a child as soon as possible.”

Isn’t it possible to ‘touch up’ our age somewhat with exercise, proper nutrition and regular doses of vitamins? The ads tell us that 40 is the new 30, and the fact is that as a consequence of a planned lifestyle transformation many women are more attractive and fitter than they were at 25… How deceiving are looks?
“The ovaries cannot be botoxed! This pithy statement did not come from me but from a British doctor, but I am in complete agreement with her.

“It doesn’t matter how externally youthful a person appears, the quantity of follicles in the ovaries gives a true picture of her age.

“There is plenty of research going on in this field but as at today, there is absolutely no method or cure that can rejuvenate the ova.”

On average, how long after consistent failure do couples turn to the fertility clinic for help, in fact, how long is it worth waiting for successful conception?
“One year for women aged under 35, while those aged over 35 should approach a specialist after six months of unsuccessful attempts at conceiving. There can be many reasons why a baby does not come, and it is worth finding what the problem is as soon as possible. Anyone who has had, for example, several bouts of acute pelvic inflammation, abdominal surgery or endometriosis may find these cause serious adhesions that can obstruct the free passage of the fallopian tubes and thus conception itself.”

Aren’t you concerned that the statistics mentioned in your lecture might put off couples approaching their forties who are exactly thinking about having children?
“This placed me in a serious dilemma before the lecture. Only after lengthy deliberation did I convince myself.

“Obviously, these data are shocking, but does this mean we shouldn’t talk about them? I believe that we, the experts, must draw the attention of young people to the fact that if they want to have children, around the age of 30 they have to start working on this and deal with family planning in a far more organized manner.

“Thank God, many 40-year-old women become pregnant spontaneously and give birth to perfectly healthy children. The fundamental purpose of my lecture was not to frighten but far more to raise awareness that, unfortunately, there are similarly very many for whom this does not go so smoothly. It is our experience that among those waiting to be blessed with children there is a serious level of misinformation in this area and some simply run out of time. For example, there is not such general awareness in the public consciousness that female fertility declines drastically after the age of 37. At this age, even a year’s delay can have major significance, so it is important that young people are made aware of this. Awareness in this area should be the task of society as a whole.”

Infertility is such a blunt, shocking expression. In a medical sense, who and from when can someone be considered infertile?
“I don’t like the word infertility. The Anglo-Saxon terminology is infertility but more recently we prefer to use the expression subfertility (reduced fertility) because many couples find they can conceive after undergoing fertility therapy. By definition, the watershed is the previously mentioned age-dependent six months or one year of unsuccessful attempts, after which infertility can arise. The professional protocol is that social security will not fund IVF treatment for those aged over 45 because on average only a single child is born for every 10 treatments. Even in the years prior to this – despite social security financing five attempts – it may happen that a woman’s hormonal state and follicle stock is such that after one or two stimulations we don’t see any sense in conducting any further IVF treatments and then, however painful it may be, we have to inform the patients of this.”

Are there miracles? Have you come across any cases that you cannot explain as a doctor?
“Yes, several.

“As I have already said, much depends on the psychological factor.

“Not long ago I read that around 15% of women successfully conceive spontaneously after unsuccessful IVF treatment. But I could also mention that at age 43 there is, let’s say, a 3-4% chance of becoming pregnant after in vitro fertilization, and there are cases where this happens. That is why I don’t like putting off couples approaching their forties with the depressing statistics. However, among the younger age groups I am happy to tell them, in their own interest, how fertility indicators change with advancing age, or to put it another way, I sound the warning bell.”

It is common knowledge that your vocation and promotion of natural births comes from your family. Was your choice of career evident from the start?
“I had other plans as well: I also wanted to be an attorney, minister of religion and archaeologist, but obstetrics-gynaecology always remained a priority. My father and uncle are in the profession and one of my sons is also studying to be a doctor. Perhaps my fate worked out as it did because my father, who is a role model for me, frequently took me along with him to hospital where I could see new-born babies. This left a lasting impression on me.”

You started working at Szent Imre Hospital, the same place as your father. Did you immediately take on his attitude?
“At that time, even in Szent Imre there was a strong tendency towards medicalization, which is still common elsewhere – there is a need for this, too, just not to such an extent. Thus I learnt about conventional obstetrics as well, but in the meantime at home I heard a lot about different kinds of birthing techniques and the importance of the mind during pregnancy and birth.

“In fact, natural births were never a driving force in the hospital, only from outside did it appear that ‘alternative’ births were occurring here day and night. There were not more than two or three doctors and midwives working with this approach, and there are not many more of us today. But this little yet highly professional team is ready to undertake breech births, for instance, and natural births after caesarean sections.

“So I’ve seen both sides and this is why it came as no surprise when evidence-based research founded on statistics confirmed: undisturbed childbirth is good and not dangerous. By the way, I would question the omnipotence of this research somewhat, because in the case of a given birth for a given person, we have to listen not only to the statistics but also to our feelings. At the same time, it is extremely important because it shows:

“If a birth starts spontaneously, if the mother can choose her own body position, if a companion of her choice can be by her side, if there are no routine interventions (if the first three conditions are met, then these are rarely invoked), and if the baby can be with his/her mother as long as possible immediately after birth and in the next few days and weeks, then the birth will in all probability take place without complications, a healthy baby will come into the world and the mother’s recovery will be rapid.

“And there will be the kind of birth experience that means afterwards, the mother will be all the more likely to have another child. In other words, this is a serious demographic factor.”

If undisturbed childbirth is such an unambiguously and verifiable good thing, why is it not practised everywhere?
“In the Hungarian system, the responsibility lies with the doctor. And if during university training they are conditioned to save lives, that is, to intervene, and then they see this live during professional practice, then they will also assume this approach. According to my father’s very telling simile, for the mother pregnancy and birth are like a flower-filled meadow, while for the doctor they are like a minefield. It is very difficult to harmonize these differences of approach. Particularly when doctors are taught nothing other than to go around as though with a mine detector.

“Naturally, in an emergency situation it is vital to intervene, but no medical intervention is required in a normal birth.

“A good example of the development of the conventional obstetrician attitude is that at the beginning of my training as a specialist, my colleagues were still interested to hear of my ‘alternative’ birthing stories at Szent Imre. Five years later, their comment on the same thing was ‘how dangerous’. Another example: a talented young colleague who had not yet started their residency with us wanted to tear the just then dilating cervix sheath but couldn’t say why.

“At a birth there are midwives as well, who are in effect trained and used as medical assistants. This is no good. This is why I recommended that there should be more practical work in the training of doctors, and midwifery training should become dual tier, in the second tier of which (master training) there should be exclusively hands-on teaching.”

You have made many recommendations, for example with regard to family-friendly childbirth and outpatient childbirth.
“I’ve been saying the same thing for close on two decades and it now appears that my efforts are not in vain: my proposals are increasingly falling on fertile ground. Most recently, that a hospital should only get funding for equipment procurement in family-friendly childbirth tenders when a high proportion of staff have been sent for extension training needed for a change of attitude: not courses on epidural blocker drugs, not communication training, not perinatal and breastfeeding specialist consulting courses.

“Only in this way is there any hope that not only women giving birth at Szent Imre Hospital can live through the experience of natural childbirth, but everyone in this country.

“The reason I submitted an application for the post of inspector was because aside from what is prescribed officially, in effect I have to do what I formerly did voluntarily: proposals to change the conventional attitude towards childbirth.”

Many view the opportunity for mother- and baby-friendly births to lie in outpatient childbirth.
“I support the introduction of outpatient childbirth as a way to reduce obstetric medicalization. Medical policymakers support this but paediatricians are rightly concerned about babies coming out of hospital care earlier because there are some settlements where they don’t even have a paediatric GP. This could be resolved with compulsory training and neonatologists making visits to family homes, but this still lies in the future. In addition, I consider it important to provide information, which is why I regularly accept invitations to speak about this, abroad as well. Women underwent a massive loss of skill since they do not live in large families where birth and caring for infants is a natural part of life. An increasing number are getting informed about their opportunities and rights, but there are still too many who even now don’t know how babies are conceived.”

You are prepared to accept this much ‘fieldwork’ in order to promote natural childbirth? How do you reconcile your many activities?
“Kata Kondor, who in my eyes is the world’s best midwife, once said:

“We cannot allow ourselves the luxury that only 100–120 women a year experience natural childbirth.

“That is why I became an inspector and I also undertook the establishment of the professional background of gynaecology in the Buda Sisters of Mercy Hospital and the reference obstetrics being formed in Bethesda Children’s Hospital, the future management of which I have been commissioned with. If these get off the ground (in all likelihood in two years’ time), I will have to rethink my commitments, but until then I’ll do my thing everywhere, including in the Gólyafészek /Stork’s Nest/ Birth Centre founded with my father and uncle. Of course, there can be situations where scheduling clashes force a decision; babies don’t arrive when it is convenient for me, but I never push for a birth just because I have matters to attend to elsewhere, so sometimes I have to cancel a surgery or I even miss another birth… It is not always easy to decide but once I have made up my mind, I stick to it and allow the other opportunity to pass. I am a devout Christian, which also helps in reaching decisions and staving off burnout.”

Talking of faith and burnout, you are one of the few gynaecologists who has never carried out an abortion. Is this possible?
“Yes.

“Under current legislation, in each state hospital it is sufficient to set up just a single team that carries out abortions. The liability to ensure this sort of provision does not exist at all in church-funded hospitals.”

And we haven’t even spoken about the family, the scouts and your parish work...
“Nor about my wife, without whom none of this would function. I met Zsuzsa at university and we married 23 years ago. Alongside giving birth to our three children, she chose to work in children’s radiology, which provides her with the joy of medical work and the role as mother of the family. We both work in Gólyafészek Birth Centre, but along with others we also founded the Páty scout troop, which today has 155 members. In all probability, sooner or later we will once again find another new joint project. It is very important for us to be able to work together, to listen to each other, to talk things through, because this is the basis of a good marriage.”

You not only sing but you teach singing to both adults and children. How?
“‘Tell me what you sing and I’ll tell you what sort of person you are.’ Kodály expressed it this way a few decades ago. Today, the question is not what we sing. Because we do not sing, we consume music. If I am travelling, I don’t listen to any music because silence is extremely important in our life, and a very rare commodity. I live three hours from Budapest and when I leave, I enjoy experiencing the darkness, the dawn, the travel and the peace. Because if I am at peace, the song can sound within me.

“It is a very beautiful challenge to bring everyday singing back into people’s lives. I have been holding Dúdoló (roughly: humming) classes for more than 10 years. I didn’t set out with grandiose, far-reaching goals; all I want is for those who come to have a good time singing together like in a spinning or distaff room. On these occasions I try to pass on ethnographical background knowledge in relation to the songs yet these are primarily relaxed, communal gatherings. We regularly meet in Göd, Budapest, Tihany, Keszthely, Tapolca, Kiscsősz and Dörgicse, but I have also held ‘hummings’ in Transylvania and even in Prague and Buenos Aires for Hungarians living in the diaspora. I consider regularity to be very important: to reach each other from week to week or fortnight to fortnight. The ‘base’ already forms a community and celebrates together.

“Kodály said that we received singing as a gift from God. It serves to know, develop and fulfil ourselves. It is therapy. It is a great opportunity!”

You are a singer and ecologist. Which comes first? How do these areas come together?
“I am frequently asked how it is possible to cultivate both areas at the same time. When this word used to have light and honour, this person was called in the tradition: peasant. The peasant sang, danced, knew the world around him or her, used but not exploited the environment, gazing heavenward he or she read the course of the stars, and cured man and animal from the pharmacy of God. I know only a fraction of this yet I learn while teaching, day by day. For example, today I loaded 30 kg of corn into the boot of my car because 100 children are waiting for me in the afternoon and 200 tomorrow. We hold a farming almanac, an unconventional tradition and environmental class, where we try to communicate to children growing up in an urban setting how up-to-date and useful the knowledge preserved by the peasant is still today.”

But you are not getting the children to kneel on the corn, are you?
“Yes, they insist! Children can be asked in Göd, Nagykovácsi, Nagymaros, Gazdagrét, Gödöllő, Vecsés and Újhatvan why it is good to kneel on the corn while saying magical phrases. At the beginning of the class we talk about from where and through whom this plant arrived, which is suggested by its common names tengeri (by sea) or törökbúza (Turkish wheat), but in relation to this we can also talk about the fact that if we are producing something in one part of the world for which there is demand in another part of the world, what a burden this imposes on the given ecosystem and from this it is our common responsibility. Kids tend to know corn in its popcorn form and now they experience that all parts of this plant were used in olden times. We make nodding birds from the corn stalk, angels from the leaf and husk, we sample corn hoecakes and polenta, we bag up the shelled corncob, and thanking them for their help I tell them with so many dried cobs I won’t have any need to chop up kindling for cooking for the next month. Nothing left over, nothing wasted.

“Naturally we sing, dance and tell tales, because as Skorenovac (Székelykeve) story-teller Boldizsár Szőcs puts it: ‘what isn’t in a fairy tale simply does not exist.’ The tale is the poor man’s university.

“I brought you a present: when I loaded the corn into the sack, a few corn kernels fell out and I thought I would surprise you with them. Look how beautiful they are! Even such a tiny thing can give joy when I hold it, look at it, touch it and get to know it!”

You have placed the corn kernels into the palm of my hand: it would even be possible to do the so fashionable mindfulness meditation with these that people are currently doing using raisins. Deepening attention can be practised with corn kernels as well.
“I am certain of that. Hold them in your open palm, sensing their tiny weight, observing the shades of colour, the miracle happens seeing that none of them are identical. You are contemplating. Einstein said that there are two ways we can live our lives: either as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle. You decide.”

Is there anything we discover now as a novelty that has already long been known in the tradition?
When I went to Moldavia, I saw plants planted and grown in gardens according to the principles of permaculture. True, the woman didn’t know that the way she cultivates her garden is what scientists term permaculture farming, nor did she know that what she called ‘gyöntölés’ others in the world know as baby massage. She inherited this knowledge in the tradition and uses it. In many cases, science lags behind tradition. I read somewhere that if a conscientious scientist travels all the pathways of science, taking winding routes and coming upon dead-ends, then all of a sudden he will find himself back where tradition originally set off. Of course, I don’t want to say that there is no need for science. Indeed, there is. Two people exist in us, the shepherd and the scientist. Just as we have a heart and a head. And now if we are talking about the Advent period, let’s see who found Jesus in the manger and how.

“Three kings set off from distant lands, three wise men from three countries, and they met up. They followed the path of knowledge, they followed their heads. Still, the shepherds arrived first, those who heard the word of an angel!

“I believe that a shepherd and a scientist exist in all of us. And these two must be in harmony in order to live a full life. As Christmas approaches, I encourage everybody to look not in the shops but in the traditions of the winter festive season.”

You also said that there is no such thing as sustainable development. Why?

“Because it is time to wake up: development cannot be sustained! There is such a thing as sustainable farming, a sustainable lifestyle – and in this area we can learn a lot from shepherds, peasants, native peoples: from all those who use the local environment in which they live. Science has to find how to move forward together with these people, arm in arm.

“The fact is, we face great challenges. I can recommend the articles, books and study papers of ethnobotanist Zsolt Molnár (researcher with the Ecological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences). For many years now he has been drawing attention to the importance of knowledge preserved by tradition. He claims that the knowledge of shepherds is essential for the preservation of our planet. His research also suggests that by following ancient teachings, Gyimes meadow cultivation not only does not reduce biological diversity, but at times it appears to actually increase it. Could there really be a solution where humanity, looking on itself as a part of nature, actually enriches and not destroys it? Researchers from all parts of the world go there to try and understand what it is that these people are doing differently. It is vital work since never in the history of humanity has nature been devastated to such a degree as now. It is a fact that we stand at the threshold of the sixth mass extinction. I don’t believe that it is possible to change this from the top down through climate summits, rather it needs individual decisions. Everybody must radically transform themselves using a different perspective of the world and lifestyle. And I believe that this could bring about change. There is a way out.”

One could really say that in this instance you are not preaching water and drinking wine since you are now in your fifth year of living in a small house without water, electricity or gas…
“As my partner puts it, we are just ‘cuddly toy peasants’ because we use a car and a ton of other blessings of civilization that were not available earlier.

“I wouldn’t like anybody to think that I live like those people from centuries earlier, far from it! But it is very good to experience this way of thinking.

“What a joy it is to drink of the spring water you have collected, when you don’t waste electricity. It is a great thing to experience quiet, candlelight, what a good thing it is to progress with the rhythm of nature. Here in the city I am always turning off lights left on unnecessarily by my colleagues because I think that what is now left burning is for us an entire year’s energy consumption. We make decisions every minute and I think that many small decisions are capable of changing first my immediate environment, then the larger and even wider environment. Of course, this lifestyle involves many challenges. Things you have to give up. There are no hot showers each morning! But there are other things instead.”

There is an archaic prayer that you often put to children in the form of a riddle: ‘In a whole year a whole God’s tree, in a whole God’s tree twelve fine branches, on its twelve fine branches its fifty-two blossoms, on its fifty-two blossoms three golden apples. Now, what is it?’ The answer is not as easy as one would have thought.
“They instantly grasp the fifty-two flowers: this is how many weeks there are in a year. Well, when they say this I respond: you are right – but then again you are not. Because it is tricky to work out from the fifty-two weeks what the three golden apples are. Taking a scientific route, approaching the matter analytically, searching for graspable points, it is by no means easy to come to a solution. But an artist using the right side of the brain feels that there is symbolism and poetry in it. Let’s see how the Moldavian Csángó Hungarians say the same thing: they speak of sixty-six blossoms. But if I add that the Csángós preserve one of the ancient versions of the Hungarian language and they are very religious, we get closer to the solution. Because the blossoms mark the number of festive days and not the weeks. Three of the blossoms stand out and nurture the golden apples, these are our three major festivals: Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. The joy of birth, the mystery of salvation and the promise of the advent of the Holy Spirit are so inseparable that they are frequently to be found together in our songs and our prayers. The first of the three golden apples just starts to shine now.”

Today, Christmas is more about consuming, buying, wrapping, throwing away, accumulating.
“Who doesn’t know the feeling of the child unwrapping the present they received, that they longed for – and yet something is still missing inside them. An object will never fulfil that which we truly desire – abundance often gives birth to scarcity. Instead of the gift-giving madness, what would be the right thing to do at Christmas? Being together. Tradition tells us everything, we just have to follow it.

“Long ago, Christmas Eve was for the immediate family and since several generations lived together, that meant that perhaps even the great grandparents were there. On the following day the larger family took part in the celebrations and then the whole village – since one half of the village was called István, the other half János. On one day the Istváns were greeted, on the other day the Jánoses – nobody was left alone!

“Modern urban existence is strange indeed, when it is emphasised that you are somebody when you build a career, when you are an individual. Contrary to this, the Chuvashes, an eastern kindred people, say that you are truly strong when you can sit down at one table with your relatives. The Christmas table of olden days was packed with many things – walnuts, honey, candles, Luca wheat – and they would put an apple there as well, cut up into as many segments as there were people sitting round the table. This was to remind them that next year they are not alone, they belong somewhere. The whole apple is the family. Kinship is the greatest power keeping people together, it is a system of assurance, a strong hedge fence, to quote the Chuvashes once again.”

On the other hand, many feel, especially now, around the festive season, that they must have strength precisely to be able to bear, to put up with the relatives.
“That it is easier alone, and that happiness is created by a rehearsed smile on Facebook. This is what the individualized world would like us to believe. But this is a scam!

“It is not by accident that we are born where we are, it is no accident that we receive those difficulties we find ourselves facing. The religious person knows that faith does not make life easier, it makes us stronger.”

I just heard a story about two siblings who did not speak to each other for six years because one accidentally strayed half a plough width into the other’s land. This occurred somewhere in Transylvania, where perhaps they have still not totally broken with tradition.
“I’m not saying that there won’t be difficulties and challenges! Indeed, there will be plenty. Old people used to say: if every little friction irritates, how will you polish your mirror? Standing next to each other, boldly facing life, we can become polished. The second of the golden apples, Easter, falls in spring, when nature is renewed, reborn. This celebration calls on us, too, for rebirth and forgiveness. The fast is designed to cleanse the body inside and out. It is the perfect occasion to settle differences. Long ago, one could not attend the celebration, the joy of resurrection without first having made peace with all those you were on bad terms with. Tradition teaches us this as well!”

On Monday night, Marina Gera won an International Emmy Award in the best actress category for her portrayal in the TV film ‘Eternal Winter’. We caught up with her a day and a half later in the Hungarian Consulate in New York.

First of all, we would like to congratulate you on this beautiful Emmy Award! How are you feeling now? 

“It’s a little bit like being drunk but I haven’t drunk anything. The past two months were very difficult, I had to process the fact of the nomination and prepare myself for these four days, I really didn’t know whether I should start campaigning or even if this had any sense because after all, how would I by myself be able to compete against the big international production companies. I worried a lot about whether invitations would arrive because of the nomination or I would disappear from the scene if I didn’t win. Luckily, all these bad feelings dissipated when I arrived in New York and I felt that people here were interested in me and that I was enveloped in love. Fundamentally, I did not travel out here for the awards ceremony but for the four-day Emmy festival, where the nominees take part in events, get to know each other and are constantly in the limelight. From this aspect, too, it is very different to the Oscars. This year, by chance the organizers selected the Consulate General of Hungary as the venue for the opening ceremony and it was a really good feeling that I, as a Hungarian, was a guest of honour here, and when I walked up the red carpet and the members of the academy and festival directors called me by my name. The second and third days were very intense, I gave countless interviews, took part in roundtable discussions and meanwhile I tried to get to know my colleagues and co-workers in the profession.” 

Was the possibility of you winning ‘in the air’?

“If I were to say now ‘very much so’ then I would certainly be seen as boastful, but this is how it was, I felt this from the academy members. It was already highly ‘suspicious’ that the festival director invited me to the lunch with academy members prior to the awards ceremony, which included the writers of the ‘Game of Thrones’ and one of the main actors, Peter Hayden Dinklage, gave a speech about what the Emmy means for him. At the awards ceremony in the evening, for the first time in my life, there were 60 photographers on the red carpet all constantly calling ‘Marina! Marina!!!’.

“I must have given at least 15 interviews there and in nearly all of them I said that on this exact day in Hungary we were remembering the victims of forced labour camps, and that it wasn’t possible to conceive of something more fitting than that precisely on this day a film about the horrors of the Gulag should be in the limelight.

“I was greatly affected when, after the nomination, it transpired on what day the prize would be awarded, and that this day coincided exactly with the commemoration day of those deported to the Soviet Union. This was even more pressure on me: not to ruin this fine moment by not winning the prize.” 

But towards the end of the evening they called your name and this really crowned the day!

“Thanks to the positive signs I was not so anxious but when they opened the envelope I was looking down all the time and gave a huge sigh. Perhaps my legs were shaking even more at the medal-giving ceremony, because that is when I happened to find myself in all this, but in a few days I grew into this ‘new role’ and so I collected the prize with a measure of self-confidence.

“I’m really pleased that I managed to have all these great experiences and I did not sense that people felt sorry for this Eastern European actress.”

Are you constantly receiving international offers and has your phone been ringing non-stop since the day before yesterday? 

“Luckily this all started a bit earlier but even so I sometimes feel that I have boarded some strange train that is taking me towards new and exciting adventures. Six months ago, a British producer contacted me saying he would like to entrust the lead role of an international film to me and he was looking for a story specifically for me. I was really pleased but my life didn’t come to a halt because of this, I thought he would get back in touch, I didn’t even check to see who he was, although of course I knew he worked as a senior producer for the BBC. Flirting with an international career aroused mixed feelings in me because obviously I have such disadvantages that I cannot totally resolve, only improve. I’ll always have an accent, but luckily I actually love performing in English and we have a performance in English at home. Academy members tried to persuade me to think about making an international career but for the moment I am being very cautious about even considering this.

“A few weeks later, the abovementioned BBC producer sent me the first screenplay draft and that is when I started doing a background check and found that he is a double Emmy Award winner. Suddenly I was delighted thinking that maybe I, too, had a chance to make it into this apparently unattainable realm, I got so excited I could hardly sleep. In the meantime, an Oscar producer teamed up with him, I would have met them now but they said I should come out first because I was a sure-fire winner and then we would talk afterwards. Who would have thought that this could really happen?

“The BBC and Netflix were behind my rivals, and the Hungarian Gulag Memorial Committee behind me, which obviously was unable to get into promoting the film in America with large sums. It is really amazing that even so they took so much notice of me. The festival director told me that in fact there had not been any question about whether I should win or not. 

“Of course, the fact that I have an Emmy Award does not make me a better actress.” 

You first thanked your foster father for the prize. Why are you grateful to him?

“My dream was to be a film actress since I was two years old. Together, we worked for at least 20 years to make this dream come true and for me to be who I am today. We really did do something for this every day starting from when I was very young. In fact, he is not an actor and yet he was able to help and I will always be grateful to him for this.” 

Thanks to Zoli, I was able to get an insight into those notes that document your life together. Just flicking through the events for the year 1997, it is enough to make one’s head spin seeing the endless number of appearances, trips and meetings. How could you handle this mad rush?

Éva: “Only with Zoli! It is certain that without him, I would not be the person I became (here she points out the numerous awards and diplomas on the walls), he is the fixed point in my life, the mainstay.”

Zoli: “My role was primarily logistics, I always had upcoming programmes for the next five years in my diary, I didn’t leave anything to chance and I supported Éva in everything in order that she could perform to her best ability on the stage. Although I never studied such matters, I was her impresario and secretary in addition to my surgical work, and I made sure that the children never suffered from our frenetic rhythm of life. I slept 4-5 hours a day for 30 years…”

How common is it in the artist world to find that somebody becomes a famous singer using the name of their husband and that a couple are so closely intertwined?

Éva: “It is absolutely unusual.

“We were considered oddballs because instability in relationships and changing partners is far more typical in this environment. However, I always said: why get into a Trabant when a Rolls Royce awaits me at home? For us, it was precisely our relationship that was a firm rock in the midst of every upset and every success.”

What sort of family did you come from when you married?

Éva: “I come from a simple family, my father worked as a chef in Bristol, my mother was a housewife. There were three children in the family; my brother died and my sister is still alive, thank God. Nobody studied music or singing. My singing teacher at school, Magdolna Raksányi, graduated from the music academy, she was a trained musician. She was the first to notice that I had a good voice and I should go to solfège and learn the piano. I was seven or eight when I enrolled myself to study music at No. 19 Mester Street.”

You were just eight when you arranged your own enrolment?

Éva: “That’s right, I knocked on the door of director Kató Bíró’s office by myself, saying that I would like to learn to play the piano. I already had my entrance exam but out of sheer stubbornness I said that my teacher had sent me. She must have seen something in the gap-toothed, pig-tailed little girl who I was because she surrendered and admitted me. The director was one of Béla Bartók’s last students, I have a lot to thank her for. From her I learnt that if anybody comes to you, give help, give them your honest opinion, and embrace them if they are talented!

“I played piano twice a week and went to solfège. In the meantime I began to sing, Kató Gödri was my teacher and I have much to thank her for as well. I had a crystal-clear pitch with an F of three ledger lines above the staff. I only found out later what talent was when I had the basis for comparison. I loved performing, I never had any inhibitions. Then my voice broke and so I threw myself into volleyball. This was yet another thing I couldn’t do half-heartedly and I was selected for the national youth squad.

“After a year my voice came back, but not the high notes that I had earlier, I was restricted to one octave and from here I had to recover after much hard practice.

“Meanwhile I didn’t give up playing sports and I was devouring books, each week I would carry home nine volumes from the library. After finishing school I was not taken on to the Liszt Academy. They said I was immature. I dealt with nuts and bolts for eight months and then I succeeded at the second entrance exam. At that time I was 19 but the big changes didn’t stop there because soon after I met Zoli.”

How did your husband reach this decisive moment?

Zoli: “I was born in 1938, my father was a doctor and my mother was a housewife. I had two brothers, unfortunately one is no longer alive. In the summer of 1944, together with my mother we fled the impending Soviet siege of Budapest to Szombathely. My father, who was in military service, came home from the Ukraine and then found himself in charge of a German hospital in Szombathely. When the Germans withdrew, we could have gone with them but my parents loved their homeland and turned down the offer. Then my father was charged because of his friendliness towards the Germans and only received the possibility of working as a doctor in Kemenessömjén for three years. From here we moved to Győr where my father became a district GP and then director of Győr hospital. We lived in the apartment of his famous predecessor, Dr. Aladár Petz. The cleaners sometimes reported him if he brought up the matter that the institute was not sufficiently hygienic and then he would be taken away and released a couple of days later. This is what the mindset was at the time… Then he became the senior works doctor at the wagon factory and at that time I started playing football and tennis with the ETO juniors. From here, he was appointed head of the Healthcare Department of the Office of Statistics, we were given a flat in Budapest and we could enrol in the Eötvös József Grammar School that was considered an elite institution.

“I passed my final exams in 1956 and went on to the medical school. In October we organized the association of university students, MEFESZ, and after the outbreak of the uprising we also set up the unit guarding pharmacies. On 2 November we flipped a coin to decide who would do the 36-hour medical shift – another boy ‘won’ and we never saw him again. Our house was shot at and the Russians set fire to the shop that was in the building. The fire brigade that happened to be passing managed to extinguish the blaze. Together with a doctor living in the same house, we organized a night-time fire watch. Once, a tank stuck its barrel through the window in the cellar where we were. We faced it there. We survived. Interestingly, the granddaughter of this doctor became Pavarotti’s secretary later on, which is why Luciano knew so much about us Hungarians. It’s a small world! Our house needed renovation and while this was going on, we lived in Kilián Barracks for eight months, five of us in one room; we slept on mattresses on the floor.

“In the meantime I played football in Statistics but I didn’t go to the first division of the national championship because I wanted to be a doctor. My father was on night duty in the VIII district and I started helping him out, I attended patients at home even before completing my finals. I let him sleep because he had heart problems.”

Where and how did you meet? 

Zoli: “The express arrived at half past three in the early hours of Monday morning on 7 July 1963. I was knocked flat. It arrived in the form of a red-haired amazon!

“A short, green skirt and hair down to her back. I said to myself, ‘now, Marton, have courage!’ There on the patient examination table, in a bikini, lay a beautiful, 20-year-old woman, Éva.

“I examined her, she certainly didn’t have appendicitis, and the stomach complaint, the reason for her coming in, had passed by the time of treatment. There were no patients and we chatted for an hour and a half as though we had known each other for years.”

Éva: “And at that time I had absolutely no idea that I was such a pretty woman! It’s true, we really did chat during that dawn as though we had known each other forever. He was the first man in my life, I really liked him, his self-confidence was most impressive, and that he could always get along with everyone. He larked about a lot but there was always a depth to what he had to say. Later on, he was able to wrap up even the most complex matters, problems connected with family or work, so that it never hurt me.

“If something did not work out, he always used to say, we don’t know what we managed to avoid. This attitude has helped a lot in the course of our life.

“Zoli always smiled, always laughed: when he came into my life he was like a sunbeam. The next day he came to the house to ask how the patient was and to remind me about the rendezvous we had agreed on, the Kati Café in Szentkirályi Street, where we also made a blood pact. Literally! Two weeks later, he stood in front of my father and said he wanted to marry me. So it started.”

How did a young doctor become mentor to an opera singer, where did your understanding of music come from?

Zoli: “I like music and yet I have no idea where my sense for it came, perhaps it is a gift. I never sang yet I have a good ear. In 1968, while sitting at the dinner table with the family, I announced: by 1981, I’ll make a world star out of Éva. My parents looked at me incredulously, yet Éva believed in me. It was also clear for me that in order to achieve this we had to go abroad because the standard that was here in Hungary would not be sufficient.

“It took ten years for Éva to make a name for herself. This may appear to be too much time but it always happens that anyone who rises too fast is unable to mature sufficiently and becomes a falling star.”

Éva: “After getting my diploma I was not immediately taken on to the Opera in Hungary, only later, and yet I felt that they were not interested in me. Primarily Zoli was the person who saw something in me, even my own mother and father did not believe in me as much. It needed those ten years to learn the repertoire. I gradually built up step by step, Zoli refused to allow me to be sold cheap, we consciously maintained the quality. Contrary to many others, I valued not the recording companies but successes in front of audiences, and only afterwards did I start doing recordings. I fought honourably for success, not sleeping with people or riding on the coattails of record labels. In all this, Zoli’s help, foresight and perfectionism were worth as much as I did on stage. We truly are two in one, and in our successes we are as inseparable, we are so mixed together, as our blood was at that time in Kati Café...”

When did you marry and how did your life continue?

Zoli: “We took our vows in 1965 and a year later our son, Zoli, was born. We lived in a 5x4-metre room on József Boulevard, in my father’s surgery together with the baby. Éva graduated in 1968 and it took another three years before she could sing the role of the Countess from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro at the invitation of Christoph von Dohnányi in Frankfurt. That was our first trip abroad, they would already have contracted her in the intermission and this is when the niggles with the Hungarian ministry started...”

Éva: “They wouldn’t allow Zoli to travel for the next production, Verdi’s Falstaff. Then we received an invitation to Florence and they didn’t want to let him go there, either. We agreed that I would not go alone and I cancelled the performances. The then world-famous conductor Riccardo Muti, with the involvement of the Italian foreign ministry, must have put the Hungarian culture portfolio in an embarrassing position because at the very last minute Zoli did actually get his visa. We have a photo of us standing next to our Skoda as we were about to leave…”

Zoli: “We left in the pouring rain. Just before Klagenfurt the windscreen wipers broke down in the storm. Éva had to manually turn a component all the way through the downpour. It was an adventure and when we finally arrived in the evening, the Skoda gave up the ghost. But on the right was the theatre, on the left the pension, and when, totally exhausted, we occupied the room, I poured a beer for myself, sat down, and the chair collapsed underneath me. Éva and I laughed so much in our torment that I can still hear us today… This was symbolic because this is how our international life got off the ground: Éva weary from the constant studying, but winning massive applause every evening, me still lying flat on my back, although I refused to spill a drop of my drink – and our cheerfulness never deserted us although things weren’t easy.

“In 1972, Éva and little Zoli received a visa to Germany and yet again they didn’t want to issue one for me, yet in the end things worked out. We arranged a ‘One-way ticket’, everything we had fitted in two bags. 50 marks, two suitcases and a child, this is how we left.

“In 1975, Éva sang in New York’s St. Patrick Cathedral with such etherealness and with such beautiful melismas that she received an invitation to the MET…”

How did you feel about leaving Hungary?

Éva: “We had to go, driven by the need to prove ourselves. Besides which, when for the first and last time in my life I dared ask for a few minutes with opera director Miklós Lukács in order to find out what their plans for me were, he took out a small lined booklet and I immediately saw the page was completely blank next to my name. It didn’t matter that I had sung minor and major, indeed some very hard roles, they didn’t take me seriously. A long line of sopranos stood in front of me and due to the ranking, this did not bode well for me.”

Zoli: “We knew what our goal was and we were together. Nothing else mattered. At that time, the homeland was our family and it was with the feeling that from now on we were living for ourselves that we disembarked at Frankfurt airport. In the first month, Juli Hamari helped us to live with 400 marks because the theatre didn’t pay in advance.

“In the early days we lived extraordinarily frugally, but we were nice and slim and Éva was constantly studying.”

Éva: “Even then Zoli had his eye on the goal. I remember that we received invitations to smaller theatres but he wouldn’t allow it. I told him: we have 20 marks and they are paying several hundred! Zoli just replied: the path to the Metropolitan is long indeed, Frankfurt is your level.”

Did either of you speak any German?

Éva: “No, I learnt Russian and I spoke a little Latin and Italian, I learnt that at the Liszt Academy.”

Zoli: “I didn’t either, but it was possible to learn in a few months. Later on, I heard an anecdote about myself, this one about how fast my English had improved: ‘Because Zoli asks not for ten thousand dollars for one evening, but twenty thousand!’”

And how did you manage this career arriving as you had from the other side of the Iron Curtain?

Éva: “I never negotiated with anyone, Zoli kept that side away, I had just one task which was to go onto the stage and sing to the best of my ability. I always behaved as a guest in all theatres of the world, the hosts could visit me at rehearsals and, if they wanted, welcome me, but I never sought them out, I never begged a single director. And there was never a single instance when, having sung a given series, there was not the next contract already in the bag.”

So Zoli, where does this managerial brilliance come from?

Zoli: “I don’t know where I got the sense for this, at that time there were no schools for managers, but somehow it was in my blood and the truth is that I successfully negotiated with even the smartest agents and directors. True, I did have an ‘ace up my sleeve’!”

And was it easy to find work?

Zoli: “I had to have my qualifications accredited, later on I completed the specialist surgical exam in Germany. It wasn’t easy. I applied for a job from the chairman of the German society of surgeons but he needed an accident & emergency surgeon and I am an abdominal surgeon. Then I was offered a post in Offenbach close to Frankfurt working alongside a strict Prussian professor.

“I was taken on but because I still barely spoke any German, I was put into the outpatient department where I worked three shifts and got a grasp of the language. I did everything. I was awarded a specialist surgical qualification after an hour of discussion and then I could become a senior doctor.”

Is there any similarity between singing and healing?

Zoli:

“Surgery starts, the curtain goes up – surgery finishes, the curtain goes down. Yes, as far as this goes.”

Éva: “Well, the difference is far greater! I could die on the stage then stand up and everything would go on as before, whereas if Zoli were to make a mistake, human lives would have been at stake. And a doctor is always on call: how many times did he help people feeling indisposed on our many trips! Once, exactly on my birthday, we were flying in a small aircraft one morning from Hamburg to Vienna when a gentleman became ill and then lost consciousness. Zoli resuscitated him and as a result he took command, the pilot made an emergency landing in Nürnberg and the patient was collected by ambulance. Later on we found out he survived and I sang Turandot in the Staatsoper that evening. It was an unforgettable birthday present from Zoli.”

Zoli: “But there was a case of abdominal bleeding where I helped my professor find the cause of the bleed. The female patient survived and it turned out later that she was Éva’s wardrobe lady at the Frankfurt Opera, where after all this our status rose even further.”

How was it possible to raise children in this packed life?

Zoli: “Our daughter Diána was born in 1974, eight weeks before the presentation of The Woman Without a Shadow. Three weeks after the birth I jogged with Éva in the forest to regenerate. I tended to deal with the children. When I wasn’t working I played football with Zoli and we went swimming. The family always came first with us, even if Éva happened to be working on another continent we talked several times a day and if there was a school break, I would fly to her with the children, if needs be to Manila or New York.

“It is a fundamental rule even to this day that we keep in daily contact with all members of the dispersed family.”

Did you make genuine friendships in the arts world?

Éva: “In Zoli I found everything I needed in a person. Husband, good friend, buddy. He provided humour and encouragement, he helped me memorize parts – oh Lord, how many cues! – he is the father of my children, an excellent doctor, a person I look up to. As far as I was concerned, besides my family I had neither the time nor the inclination to chat with others. When I returned to one or two familiar places, to New York, Houston, Barcelona, there were always a few lovely people I could talk with but I only ever saw them again when my career took me that way once more. Zoli is my intellectual partner as well, we went to exhibitions together, he can draw very well, we played sports together, we did so many great things! We were in absolute harmony! Our friends tended to be doctors, a singer is always on the road, it is a different life. I had no need of chatter, either: even today I am unwilling to go anywhere with others because Zoli doesn’t like going out.”

What was it like resettling in Hungary?

Zoli: “We regularly returned from the early 1980s, Éva made many recordings and occasionally she appeared at the Opera House or gave a concert. We always wanted to come back, in the middle of the 1990s we started coming to Hungary and finding out about the situation from Hungarian singers – and we started building. We have lived in this house since 2000, we are on the ground floor, our son’s family is on the first floor with our two grandchildren, Zoltán (29) who works in a Berlin bank, and Péter (26), who is in the auto industry. On the second floor, our daughter lives with her husband and our two granddaughters (12 and 9 years). My daughter and her husband design costumes for films.”

Éva: “There must be a fire burning in every person, if this is not burning within you, you are not worth anything. Zoli feeds this sacred flame in me, every day. And this fire also burns for our homeland, for our being Hungarian!”

Next year you will have been married for 55 years, so you are past even your golden wedding anniversary…

Zoli: “Plus two years of the training camp, that was quite something, too!”

Éva: “It was great being together!”

“I don’t know what else God has in mind for us but it is still very good being together. Sometimes I would like to strangle him, you can see that we are still interrupting each other even now. We were always passionate and being ourselves.

“Once my daughter said, on seeing how energetic we are, that if we are buried in the same place, the earth will still be moving in 30 years!”

Dramatic soprano Éva Marton has performed at the greatest opera houses of the world, from the New York Metropolitan to Milan’s Scala, for three decades. She has sung with partners such as Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and Sherrill Milnes, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta and Solti György, Götz Friedrich, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and Harry Kupfer. Her diary is still packed even now: sitting on juries of singing competitions and holding courses. As former head of the singing department she is professor emerita at the Liszt Academy, senior consultant at the Hungarian State Opera, and a member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts. She is holder of many awards, including the Kossuth Prize and Artist of the Nation, the Corvin Chain and the highest state award, the Hungarian Order of St. Stephen. She is a life member of the Vienna State Opera House, Chamber Singer of the Austrian State, and in 2019 the Kennedy Center in Washington brought their gold medal to Budapest for her. In autumn 2020, the international singing competition named after her and chaired by her is being organized for the fourth occasion at the Liszt Academy.

So, in your case, it was not a one-night stand.

Gergő: “Even if I had had such intentions as a young, independent man, still I stumbled across one of the world’s most moral, most pure-hearted people. We chatted for hours and in the end we parted without arranging the next meeting.”

Ancsa: “I saw that this boy really wanted something from me but I was not the sort of girl that could be picked up at a party for one night. I liked him, but I studied in Eger, my family lived in Kecskemét, this was also where I played water polo, and I felt that a Budapest ‘detour’ just wouldn’t fit into my life. I told Gergő this as well but even so, when it came to say goodbye, I gave him a kiss. However, he didn’t get my phone number. Even so, a week later I sent him the halls of residence number and my father’s, saying that if he was still interested, I would be pleased to get to know him better.

“Since at that time there was just one telephone on each floor of the halls of residence, if Gergő called other people couldn’t reach the residence – which is why I was soon spending a large part of my evenings in a public phone booth. When I was down in Kecskemét, he could contact me on my father’s phone because I didn’t have my own then.”

Gergő: “A landline phone was the only way of keeping in touch and I quickly took over paying my parents’ phone bill: their costs were a few hundred forints, mine were three thousand.”

Ancsa: “After meeting for the first time in September, it was weeks before we could meet again in person. This happened when I was able to go from Kecskemét back to Eger via Budapest. There was one time when I played in Budapest with Kecskemét but Gergő was in the countryside with Fradi. Finally, an accident brought us together: in December, Gergő’s eardrum was damaged and it became infected because he played another three matches with a damaged ear. He became feverish, he couldn’t get out of bed for weeks he was so frail. In January I had my exams and I was able to schedule my time with a degree of freedom so that in effect we moved in together at a time of necessity and unnoticed.”

Gergő: “Right from the start we both thought of our relationship very seriously; I reckon that just a few weeks later we were having really serious discussions like many who have been ‘going out’ for years.”

Just one year after you met, Gergő received a massive opportunity from one of the best water polo teams in the world. Was it difficult to reach a decision when you were 20?

Gergő: “It was a huge decision. I grew up by myself, my mother worked from home and she spent a lot of time with me; my career playing water polo was developing, I was invited to join the world’s best team and in the meantime I wanted to go to university. Ancsa was going to college, she wanted to get a diploma and she received a very good job offer. So things were hectic…”

Ancsa: “When Gergő was invited to Naples he took me with him and introduced me to the Italians as his fiancée. They were very surprised when during talks he asked for a brief break and came out to me in order to talk over the offer.

“They didn’t understand the situation but once I gave my backing – what else could I do – they turned to me with great respect as well. He got the offer in September and we had six months to prepare: I took my half-year exams and then asked for a year’s postponement.”

Ancsa comes from the countryside and has five siblings, Gergő is a single child from the city, and your natures are somewhat different. Was it easy to get along? How did you manage to agree on the number of children, for example?

Ancsa: “In my teens we moved to a farm but before that we had lived in Kecskemét and Szentes so I grew up in a small town environment. The move to Budapest was not easy, I was horrified by the smog.”

Gergő: “It was a big challenge to meet and accept Ancsa’s big family. But I am a team player so it was OK. It was interesting and exciting to get to know close up everybody from tots to students finishing school.”

Ancsa: “My youngest sibling was five months old when we first met. This was strange for me, not to speak of Gergő. We agreed on two children. Gergő would have been happy with one but I don’t think it is a good thing for a single child being alone. We stayed with two for a long time but the children grew up so fast that I started to say to Gergő: I’d like another. Thus our third daughter was born.”

What do you have in common? Gergő once said to me: “Together, Ancsa and I make a great team. It is a pleasure to do everything with her – watch a film, go walking, partying, playing sports and travelling”.

Ancsa: “We have a love of water polo in common, for example. I loved every second of what Gergő has spent a large part of his life doing. Even when he was physically distant. When he took part in Olympics, I didn’t go with him – firstly out of superstition, then because of the children – but in any case, team captain Dénes Kemény didn’t back the idea because he felt family members diverted the attention of players.

“But I closely followed and lived through the excitement of the preparations and matches because Gergő regularly called and told me everything: exactly what had happened to him, how he was, how he felt – all the sorts of things that you don’t share with others.”

Gergő: “Love of the homeland is also something we share, in the sense that we love travelling, we are always longing for the sea and the Mediterranean lifestyle, yet we always come home because we want to live here. We have the same principles as far as bringing up the children is concerned: we try to develop their personalities so that they not only receive but we can expect from them. We believe that wherever they live, they have to maintain certain standards towards their families and their wider communities. And we try to avoid the biggest pitfall, when the child sets the parents against each other, which is why we always ask them: ‘What did Mum (or Dad) say about this?’”

Ancsa: “We share our musical experiences, our interest in culture and history. Similarly, we are both open towards meeting new people. Naturally we enjoy ourselves in the company of water polo players but as it happens, of those we go out with on a regular basis none play water polo.”

Gergő: “I can always count on my fellow water polo players but I have always had another life: school, university, neighbours… I’ve always stayed a dual resident: Budapest and the VII district has the same place in my heart as Szada, where we have lived for more than 18 years.

“Since we have known each other, we have moved countless times, we have lived here in Hungary and abroad, we have experienced everything from being jobless to luxury; we have had successes and failures in teaching and careers, divorce and deaths among friends and our relatives. After all this, resolving an everyday situation appears pretty straightforward.”

Ancsa: “The two of us together are very good at sorting out problems; we have much in common, yet in many things our differences also work out. I explode easily, Gergő resembles a slow volcano. Our kids reckon it is better if Mum goes mad than when they hear roaring from the 2-metre-tall Dad…”

Gergő: “She is practical, I am more theoretical. She is the other half of my personality, the person who puts together the details. She hates putting off things, conflicts or tasks. Sometimes I ask for five seconds to react but generally I don’t get it. I would like to help her but by the time I am thinking of starting she is already doing it.”

Ancsa: “I don’t like waiting… Gergő has been at home for seven years but in the first 15 years he wasn’t here much; I couldn’t really wait for anybody. As a first-born, my father brought me up as a boy, probably that is why I like doing DIY and gardening so much. And of course, doing the housework and dealing with our children. For many years, Gergő disappeared for weeks and when finally he came home I didn’t want him to be the more strict parent. I, however, am consistently strict with them.”

Ancsa, wasn’t it tough being alone for so long? Gergő, wasn’t temptation too strong for you being far from Ancsa?

Ancsa: “When I was 20, I decided I would be the hinterland for my husband. It wasn’t difficult to resign my career playing water polo; I loved it but I was never as enthusiastic about it as he was. I did my things accordingly and I could always agree with the children: if there is training or a match, Daddy’s job always comes first.”

Gergő: “We have often talked through what would happen if Ancsa worked in an office for 8-10 hours a day. She would get home late in the evening, our children would be taken here and there and brought up by a babysitter, and we would give her a good proportion of our income. But this way she can be with them a lot and meanwhile she is always doing something: in Naples, for example, she taught children aquafitness and swimming, she was a guide and she also worked as a language teacher. She helps me a lot in my administrative matters and in our joint company; she provides motivation to many women at @Familymanager7 Instagram page, where she has more than 11,000 followers. As far as the other question goes…”

Ancsa: “A smart woman finds the way so that there is no temptation. We talk over everything, we play our cards face up. Honesty is sometimes painful but it pays off in the long run. And of course, this is the foundation of trust as well.”

Gergő: “What a man can love in a woman my wife has it all. And I greatly love everything in her, but mostly her purity of soul and sincerity. I consider her bad characteristics to be ‘part of the package’. I have seen many beautiful women but it never once crossed my mind that things could be better with another woman.”

“My principal topic is Hungary in the 20th century. I am particularly interested in events that cannot be ranked in major political trends, that are to do with everyday life and private lives. Periodicals, memoirs, diaries and personal reminiscences have become important sources for me. True, part of the profession does not accept these as full-right documents but even so there are ever more of us dealing with history from the ‘micro-angle’, from the viewpoint of individuals.”

In historical works dating from the Kádár period and even after the change of system, the Horthy era was portrayed as one of stagnation or rather reversal from the aspect of women’s emancipation. Your book ‘Modern, diplomás nő a Horthy-korban’ (Modern, educated women in the Horthy era) written with your co-author historian Balázs Sipos makes this image more nuanced and authentic.
“When we started research from primary sources, for example, statistics, periodicals writing about the situation of women, parliamentary speeches, acts, we were surprised to see how inaccurate earlier assessments had been.”

What picture did you get of women’s movements in the Horthy era? What sort of main trends were asserted in the period?
“The liberal Feminist Association, associated with the name Róza Bédy-Schwimmer, played a defining role before the First World War. However, after the war they lost their social opportunities, they withdrew and two of their leaders actually moved abroad. Their endeavours were only partly progressed by the similarly liberal associations of Bródy Ernőné and their journal, Dolgozó Asszonyok Lapja (Journal of Working Ladies).

“The social structure in the interwar period allowed room for manoeuvre primarily for conservative women’s movements, which professed not the internationalist and, to a certain extent, ‘manly’ trend of the earlier feminist movement but instead they represented feminine, motherly and national-based emancipation ambitions.

“They considered it important that the work of women be valued on an equal basis to that of men, that all university studies should be available to women and that they should receive suffrage. For example, those women graduates of universities and colleges who belonged to the inner circle of intellectuals of the public journal Magyar Női Szemle (Hungarian Women’s Review) wanted to show society that a woman’s intellectual professional career was not in contradiction with being a mother. Their organization rallied around Margit Techert Magyaryné.

“The most conservative women’s umbrella organization with the biggest membership of the time, The National Alliance of Hungarian Ladies (MANSZ) hallmarked by the name of Cécile Tormay, was partly with them but largely opposed. MANSZ’s journal was called A Magyar Asszony (The Hungarian Lady). Its member organizations supported the government’s revisionist policies and representation, and on the whole uniformly represented the principle of ‘ladies remaining at home’, which was justified first and foremost as protection of the nation. Of course, aside from these there were very many other smaller women’s associations. Non-lobbying, for example, charitable groups and press material directed at women communicated the image of active women interested in doing something for society.”

Several historians only apply the label ‘feminist’ to liberal or social democratic female activists, saying that they represented women’s genuine efforts at full equality of rights. They reckon that conservative women’s activism just fought for a ‘minimal programme’, partial results, in the meantime accepting the traditional roles of women. Do you think this is the actual situation?
“I consider this differentiation to be artificial since conservative women activists also called themselves feminists, although it is true that they distanced themselves from the combative suffragette branch of feminism considered to be ‘damaging to the nation’. The goal of their efforts at improving society was raising up disadvantaged women and children, but they also supported men in difficulty and they were very troubled by the fate of the country dismembered in the wake of the Trianon Treaty. I wouldn’t call, for example, a ‘minimal programme’ the fact that they were demanding universities be fully opened for women, or that the educated woman could continue her profession and vocation after marriage. We can use the term feminist for them as well, respecting their work and the fact that they also considered themselves like that.

“In many cases, I consider it unnecessary to differentiate between left wing and conservative feminists because the majority of their endeavours were identical. However, their style – rhetoric and use of words – was different.

“A revolutionary, harsh, aggressive stance stood far from conservative women at the level of word usage. The justifications for their emancipation ambitions also differed: they used biological arguments, but they also brought in principles of Christian creation when proving the equality of men and women, and they placed great emphasis on improving the country, furthering the prosperity of the nation, as well as healing war and Trianon traumas as being among the tasks of women.”

In their book, they call conservative women’s endeavours mother-based feminism, because they considered family and motherhood to be an outstanding positive value, and they wanted to reach the point where the role of working women should be compatible with their role as mothers.
“In the interwar period, many graduate women achieved this very thing. An increasing number had jobs while married and even after having children. It is true that they related to their work, their colleagues and factory workers with caring responsibility; social democratic women did the same thing with a slightly comradely disposition.”

Can one state that the development of the fate of women was significantly shaped by conservative feminism between the two world wars?
“Yes. The Association of Hungarian Women Graduates of University and College (established: 1925), or more accurately, those involved with their journal, Hungarian Women’s Review, who rallied around Margit Techert Magyaryné, formed one of the most significant groupings of women’s interest representation of the Horthy era.

“They were most effective at defending themselves against those strong views formulated most sharply by educational politician Gyula Kornis in his article from 1925: women are unsuitable for intellectual careers, their exclusive vocation is the family and motherhood, and this does not require higher education and a diploma.”

In the late 19th century, a huge social debate erupted over whether women’s physical condition and brain capacity made them at all suitable to fill intellectual positions bearing responsibility. Doctors, scientists, politicians voted for one side or the other.
“This dispute spilled into the first third of the 20th century, although the mass base of those professing women’s unsuitability gradually declined. Years later, Gyula Kornis himself also participated in the university private docent exam of philosopher Margit Techert Magyaryné and spoke highly of her.”

Who were the defining, influential female personalities of this period?
“It is difficult to pick out just a few. Margit Techert was a doctor of philosophy and a university professor, she edited a journal and she was the wife of Zoltán Magyary, an important scientist and statesman. I must mention from the conservative feminist circle, without covering everybody, Emma Ritoók, writer and aesthete, Mária Vendl, expert in minerology, Margit Prahács, musicologist, Edit Fél, ethnographer, Marianne Czeke, the first librarian – but they did not attempt to raise the profile of themselves, the association was characterized by sisterhood, they appeared to the outside world as a unified female camp. They had a separate room at the Budapest university, they held lectures and career advisory sessions, and they represented themselves in the leadership of the universities in Pécs and Debrecen.

“Their example and attitude had a great impact on women who wanted to study.

“Cécile Tormay represented the other end of the spectrum. In 1919, she founded the abovementioned MANSZ, which numbered several hundred thousand members by the second half of the 1930s. Her novels proved incredibly popular both in Hungary and abroad, she was editor in chief of the literary periodical Napkelet, and she became a celebrity.

“And of course we must not forget those special promoters of emancipation, the highly influential actresses of the day, for example, Lili Muráti, Mária Mezei and Katalin Karády. They projected the image of a self-aware, funny, liberated, erotically seductive woman interested in enjoying life. Films even reached women in the villages thus the divas of the period created fashion and became role models. It happened on more than one occasion that graduate women considered their influence to be a caricature of emancipation and they felt they actually harmed the cause.”

Did the association of graduate women have social campaigns?
“They tried very hard to remain politically neutral; in the journal they gave British, German and Soviet examples of ‘women’s achievements’. In practice, too, they wanted to show an example and exercise influence more through gentle persuasion and by pursuing careers in science.

“They regarded all their published studies and books as sowing seeds so that others would follow suit.

“But they also did charity work, they travelled out to the villages, organized female caretaker positions in factories and supported midwives and district nurses. They assisted middle schools operating on modest budgets with scholarships and donated furnishings for halls of residence. Their charitable activities were also ‘motherly’ in nature and primarily directed towards recruiting women for scientific careers.

“During the period preceding the war, the pace of modernization increased in all areas. Living conditions changed so that it no longer required a certain ideology for the transformation of social relations and roles.

“It is sufficient to consider the move away from wearing folk costume, the modernization of households, the reduction in the size of city dwellers’ apartments, and so on. All these changes in themselves meant that women’s roles and work had to be rethought.”

I find it surprising that even high-ranking statesmen supported the cause of women’s emancipation, work and higher education. For example, Kunó Klebelsberg, who declared that the more educated a woman was, the more she became aware of her inner value.
“We are the first to point this out in our book. Earlier, history works drummed into people that the Horthy era resulted in regression from the aspect of women’s emancipation, and there was absolutely no legislative programme that served their interests.

“Contrary to this, we actually see that during the Horthy era an ever-increasing number of women graduated from higher education, ever more were able to pursue salaried work besides caring for their families, and their cause found supporters in the highest circles.

“Although it is a fact that up until the Second World War total equality was not achieved in learning and employment, this was not exclusively a Hungarian phenomenon.”

What was the role of religious denominations in the women’s emancipation movements?
“Nuns who maintained their communities through work and were relatively independent of men have long been a role model for the working woman. Furthermore, it was a tradition among the Christian denominations for girls – at least girls from middle class families – to be educated. Indeed, at that time one could frequently hear that it was a battle to make a living, not every girl could expect to get a husband, so it was important to learn a profession in order to be able to keep oneself. For example, the books of higher elementary school teacher Jolán Gerely on career choices and self-help were printed by an ecclesiastical publisher and proved to be bestsellers. She recommended acceptable professions that paid a living wage for girls from a business point of view as well. The world in which women were seen as only capable of carrying out auxiliary work or jobs that meant they kept their hands clean had come to an end. They had to choose that profession where there was demand. Of course, she expressed the view that if at all possible, once the woman had married she should rather stay at home. But a woman could still live a complete life even if she did not find a husband, instead finding a vocation that allowed her to nurture her ambitions.”

The Christian feminist movement of Margit Slachta, the first female member of parliament in Hungary, was also significant. Members of the monastic community took part in social and political campaigns designed to raise women and families.
“The Catholic movement Society of Social Brethren extended throughout wide circles although their opponents threw the accusation at them that what they were doing was as irrelevant as scratching away at the tip of an iceberg. All church denominations had women’s movement groups, the Reformed, Evangelical and Israelite congregations also operated charitable associations undertaking social missions within their own areas.”

Charity and ‘feminine’ care are also social acts. We frequently undervalue social assistance campaigns from a movement point of view, even though they have a society-shaping influence.
“I also think like this. Even more so because undervaluing social work and its society-shaping influence can be observed even today.

“Naturally, we can say that the conservative women’s movement did not change all of society, it did not achieve all its goals, but if we look at individuals, for example, how many of them could go on to further education thanks to association scholarships, then in a year even ten people count because the possibilities for those ten improved significantly. Not to speak of the fact that there were some who, thanks to this, escaped from prostitution.”

The Second World War marked a sharp break in the history of women’s movements. What was successfully preserved and further developed under socialism?
“This was a sharp caesura in the life of major personalities as well, many died in the course of fighting or deportations. For example, Margit Techert and her husband committed suicide because of the brutalities of Soviet soldiers. In the case of a profoundly religious Catholic couple, this is an especially harrowing act. In the new post-war society, everything that was considered traditional and civil became an object of suspicion, so it is no surprise that in just a few years all civil and church organizations disbanded. Although universities were opened to women, the earlier gender-based discrimination was replaced with discrimination based on origin. Workplaces could not be chosen, they were allocated.

“The so-called period of socialism created a contradictory situation for women. It opened up many opportunities but at the same time it created specific exploitation. The traditional model of the man-woman relationship continued to function in social conditioning and in private life. Women became and were in one person wage-earners, wives, mothers, and domestic ‘workers’. Only a narrow social segment was interested in women’s inequalities.”

This is how we got to the change of system, 30 years ago, in 1989, when a new chapter opened, but that is the topic of another conversation.

Fortuitously, during the clear-out a Faludy researcher just happened to be on hand: József Gál, third year doctoral student of the Szeged humanities faculty, who is writing his dissertation on the works of the poet known by many simply as Uncle Gyuri. Although it is not possible to say with 100% certainty, still it is highly likely (based on calligraphy and his biography) that the script was indeed written by Faludy himself.

The inscription may have found its way onto the piece of furniture when György Faludy held (full house) lectures at the university in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

József Gál didn’t hesitate and he set about bargaining for the table with Zsófia Szilágyi, head of the Hungarian Literature Department. His persistence paid off (he offered six chairs and a table in return) and he finally became the proud owner of the relic, which he was unable to keep in one piece. He had the part containing the signature glazed and a photo of the original state of the table can be seen in the head office of Forrás periodical in Kecskemét.

However, György Faludy is not only currently playing tricks on his colleagues at Szeged University, but on the literature canon, too. Mainly by his being unable to find his place in it. According to József Gál, the reason for this neglect is that the poet who spent many years in emigration and returned to Hungary in 1988, and who then got mixed up in a series of frivolous situations in his life and depicted these in his works, “always positioned himself outside ‘grand  politics’ while he always had an opinion about nearly all political changes”. This may go some way to explaining why nobody is lobbying for the popularization and publishing of Faludy’s works that have stirred up today’s literary scene just a little. Although the researcher notes that he reckons Faludy is currently not on the periphery but instead “in purgatory, awaiting a decision on whether he is to be moved up or down”.

It is well worth paying a visit to this poetic purgatory because with the help of poems one gets a better sense of and feels closer to historical situations, which have become dry facts to learn in the pages of textbooks.

Anyone interested in having an overview of the Rákosi era from the viewpoint of those imprisoned, or would like to better understand why Hungarians took up arms in 1956, would be well advised to bury themselves in his work Prison Poems 1950–53. It is sufficient to mention, from among the many sufferings, his internment in Kistarcsa, the underground cells of the state security police (ÁVH) and the labour camp at Recsk, where György Faludy conceived one of his most important poems in 1952: Monologue on Life and Death. Gál reckons that in terms of quality, this poem on Hungarianhood can easily stand alongside Miklós Radnóti’s work I Cannot Know. Whereas the verse by Radnóti took its final shape prior to forced labour at Lager Heidenau, Faludy’s, according to his own statement, was born in his head in an ÁVH cell and, lacking a pen, the author shared it verbally with his own cellmates. Monologue on Life and Death recited by Faludy himself can be seen on YouTube by clicking here, and as they say on social media, if you only listen to one poem today, make sure it is this one.

The PhD student reveals that these days, legacy research is no easy matter. The main reason for this is that it is difficult to access existing memorabilia due to complex inheritance ownership rights. József Gál is working on the collection of the poet’s correspondence between 1956 and 1963, in addition to which he is gathering data primarily in the State Security Services Historical Archives where a dossier containing a significant number of documents was kept.

He is trying to reconstruct what was probably the most productive and significant period in the life of the poet (between 1945 and 1963) largely based on reports by ÁVH informers.

The fact that it is possible to examine the life of a significant literary figure from the point of view of state bodies exercising power may bring about new results, says the researcher.

Since the quantity of Faludy correspondence is not far off that of the diaries of Márai, József Gál is in no easy position and unfortunately he does not have much competition. The poems of Uncle Gyuri are starting to drop out of the secondary school curriculum and his other important patriotic poem, Ode to the Hungarian Language, is heard increasingly rarely at recital competitions. Ever fewer people know what the dedication that turned up just a few weeks ago means: ‘György Faludy was here’. An important oeuvre is beginning to fade from memory.

My daughter was 11 months old when she was diagnosed as being fructose intolerant, 13 months old when lactose intolerance was registered, and nearly three years old when they discovered a milk protein allergy. This is because she produced atypical symptoms: she did not have eczema, rashes, and she was developing properly. In vain did I tell the doctor at the monthly check-up that the child had considerable stomach pains and cried a lot (virtually all day), because she ticked all the boxes for development given her age (and I didn’t slam my fist on the table sobbing that the days were simply intolerable), they just waved me off saying ‘this is the three-month colic’, and then later ‘there are some who go until six months’.

When she was 11 months, the doctors accused me saying, why did I want to take her to a gastroenterologist, after all, only stick-thin children were taken there, or those with blood in their stool, while she was in good physical condition.

This much was true, she really had developed nicely. Only that with us, right from the beginning, the days were solely about trying to calm our baby because she was always crying. I constantly rocked her and of course tried all the other ways of easing the pain, from massage and antispasmodic products through homeopathy right up to the wrap-her-in-swaddling-and-hold-her-close therapy – of course, as far as was sensible. Unhappily, nothing helped.

Now I know that she was having spasms and her stomach was extremely painful. Then, however, all we could see was that she cried and was fussy, and when she had got a bit bigger it appeared that she was slightly hysterical. We never had the first smile...

When guests came, she watched them for a time and then the spasms started again and everything would begin over again (crying, rocking until she went to sleep again). Based on the questions asked by the district nurse and doctor, I began to suspect that my baby was autistic, but there were very many other factors that went against this and my husband always reassured me.

When finally at the age of 13 months it transpired that the baby had fructose malabsorption and lactose intolerance, one or two months after the diet started the doctor admitted that he had begun to suspect behavioural disorder and would never have considered that some sort of stomach/intestinal/dietary problem could be behind the serious, introverted, sometimes tearful mood of a baby.

A month after we started the diet (dairy and fructose free), the change was already noticeable to those around her.

She slept better from the start (something we were even more pleased about), she smiled more often, became happier and more at ease. Of course, in company she still remained the slow-to-relax child who she had been earlier, and this characteristic carried over into the creche. When she started kindergarten she was more open and interested, but she remained basically a contemplative type. Just a few months later, however, I noticed that she was once again turning inwards, she frequently had headaches, sometimes stomach aches, she didn’t play much with her brother and anyway was very enervated and bad tempered. By complete chance it turned out that there had been a change of caterer.

It appeared incredible that the food would have such an effect on a child, but after much discussion, experimenting and trials we reached the point where I started cooking her kindergarten menu for the whole day. A month or two later, a miracle happened.

My daughter opened up in the kindergarten, she no longer played alone on the carpet or in the sandpit, but with her classmates. She made friends. One day the teacher told me that she had been in a fight (she had been protecting herself and justice). Good God! I reckon no other parent would have been as happy as I was on hearing such news. Another month went by and they came to tell me how cute and mischievous my baby was! These reports warmed my heart no end.

Then as things worked out, we had another go at canteen catering because on top of eight hours work, housekeeping and the children it was a terrible strain cooking the kindergarten menu every day (free from everything). After just two weeks the teacher asked how long we would be trying this way because even now she also had seen a change in the child. In the end we managed six weeks. By then my daughter was coming out of kindergarten in a bad mood every day, once again we were starting every morning battling the I-don’t-want-to-go-to-kindergarten hysteria, and one morning she even started shouting with her father in front of the teacher. Every afternoon my nerves were in a mess because of her behaviour and perhaps it will come as no surprise to anyone that after a month and a half I was back cooking. One or two weeks later, she was back to normal, loving kindergarten and forming friendships.

Even though we have a mass of experience, I am also frequently surprised by things.

It may be that there is no scientific research on the connection between diet, nutritional allergy/sensitivity and behaviour, but what we experienced in this regard over the past few years is a fact.

The food intolerance of my daughter resulted in the Babakonyha fructose and lactose free diet blog, where I rarely spoke about personal matters, instead sharing fructose-, lactose-, milk- and egg-free recipes with mothers in a similar situation. But sometimes I found that I was also fed up (approximately once every two years) and freaked out on the Facebook page linked to the blog. On one such occasion the mother of a young girl woke up to the realization that her daughter could be fructose intolerant as well. Luckily their doctor was open to the idea and the examination, the mother moved quickly and it turned out that she was right. Since then, if her child keeps to a low fructose diet, she is good tempered, funny and obedient, as far as any child can be.

Thanks to the blog, I receive many letters from people sharing their experiences with me, making enquiries and asking questions. From these letters it is apparent that eczema is not the only typical symptom for a milk allergy, but for example constant upper respiratory illnesses, asthma-like bronchitis, while with fructose it is constant stomach aches, fussiness and introverted behaviour. It is important never to generalize. Just because your baby’s tummy is hurting, he/she is picky with food or breaks out in hysterics, this does not necessarily mean he/she certainly has a food intolerance. No, definitely not. It really can be a weather front, teething, a bad day and I could go on (I know them all, we went through every single one of them).

Since the baby was the first in the family, we only slowly came around to the realization that we could have been right all along, and the developmental path that our child went down was not usual. One thing is certain: if this is a long drawn-out state, and the mother is on the brink of what she can bear, then it is well worth seeking out a doctor one can trust and who is ready to check out all the possibilities.

It is possible to refute any connection between behavioural disorder and dietary intolerance or food allergy, and I admit that in part the doctors are right because one cannot immediately rush off to the gastroenterologist with every child showing behavioural disorder symptoms. Instead, it is worth examining carefully the environment, background etc. However, if one thinks about how we, adults, feel if after eating something our stomach starts hurting or gets spasms, how as a result we don’t want to do anything, how little we feel like smiling, laughing, how enervated we become, and are happiest just lying on the bed until it goes away, then this is worthy of consideration. And more so with a child, an infant, who is unable to express all these feelings. This is why I would recommend that we pay attention to our children intelligently, listen to our mothering instincts, because as my experience shows, it only rarely deceives.

You can invent the wheel now, but in fact, it has already been invented.

OK, that was our childhood, a long time ago, forty or more years – but as adults, we were also following the same pattern, this was natural. When we built our house, we invested considerable energy and labour into digging out a space for a large rainwater cistern, which we have used ever since to water the garden. (They used the tank for something else before, it would have been thrown out and we asked for it.) Our house is the sort that has been built for centuries: brick walls, tiled roof, wood windows and doors; it breathes, it works, it is no bigger than it needs to be, it is not hyper-insulated, there is no air-conditioning. Later on, we swapped gas heating for wood-burning to reduce our energy dependency. Not only was there never 23 degrees warmth in the winter, but 20 degrees was rare enough.

We planted fruit trees in the empty plot that had once been arable land, and virtually not a year has gone by that we didn’t plant more and more. Every year we make jam from the fruit of these trees – sometimes there is a bounteous crop, sometimes not, this the risk in agriculture – and then eat it throughout the year. The poorer quality produce goes for pálinka (fruit brandy). We slaughter pigs and this provides the year’s sausages and ham; we buy cold cuts only rarely. We are able to differentiate good mushrooms from bad, and each year we pick a lot of mushrooms which are preserved and last until the winter. (Of course, a mushroom expert also double-checks them.) We’ve always had a vegetable garden – I have already written about what is so good in this. To this day we do not drink bottled soft drinks or mineral water. We do, however, have reusable soda siphons. We put empty jam jars aside for jams and preserved produce, paper goes to recycling or burning in the winter, and all the other waste (there is not much) is collected selectively. And we compost just as we saw at home. We have always spent a lot of time outdoors, as children, too, and we went on many excursions with our children. We learnt, and we have taught, the basic rules of behaviour when in the countryside, one of the principal ones being that all trash is always brought home. We have never been under the spell of brands, not in terms of clothes, cars or anything else.

But these are not vows, they are not resolutions, nor are they great achievements to be shouted about – they are the natural way of living.

With some differences or other, this is how things are with others who grew up in a tradition-respecting, conservative, frequently rural environment. The sort who did not first read the expression protection of creation a month ago, but who heard it in their childhood at scripture lessons, in the scout camp and in their own small communities. Or rather not heard it, but lived it.

In this inherited knowledge, the emphasis has always been on human life. Only by man we never meant ourselves, but the human community.  We look after the values of nature and do not consume excessively for the good of the human community here on Earth. And that's why we are looking after it now.

Cliché as it is again, the point is that we don't say it, we do it.

And, naturally, we also seek how we can do things even better. But that’s the reason why campaign-like climate protection conducted on Facebook sometimes appears to be straining, bringing a smile to the face.

Of course, this does not mean that there is no sense in banning drinking straws. Let’s just say, however, that here, in the Carpathian Basin, I am somewhat sceptical about the matter of bamboo-handled toothbrushes.