I assume you have a childhood love for bicycles?

Bicycles and love are really intertwined in my life. As a child, I wanted to be a PE teacher, then a welder, and then I basically combined the two: today I help people with disabilities to move, and I weld iron, which is my trade. As for love: when I was courting, I was a relatively good cyclist. And then I tied my first girlfriend1s bike to my bicycle with a piece of string and towed her up the hills of Szada. Then I asked my master, my uncle, to make a tandem for the two of us. That's how the story began.

And how did it continue?

There are no coincidences. As fate would have it, a friend of ours was raising a blind child and told us how nice it would be for them to have a tandem. Word followed word, and then I made one. Then I got a call from the director of the Institute for the Blind, and they ordered three three-seaters. This was in the mid-nineties, but I still fixed them last year – it feels good to see my piece of work still running with its twenty-year-old parts.

Did you decide, or did life decide, to specialize in such special needs?

Life did. For example, one day a disabled man wandered into my shop with a piece of paper in his hand, which I still have to this day – he brought a drawing of a special bike he wanted. He copied it from a foreign newspaper brochure, we made it, and it worked. Since then, he has designed more, and I even refurbished a go-kart for him, one with pedals. It was after many, many years, that he brought it back for a repair this year; I have many returning customers like him.

Few people do this kind of work because it is labour-intensive, but not a big money-maker. You can only do it out of professional challenge and dedication, there is plenty of struggle with it.

How did you gain experience in deciding which type of bike is suitable for which type of injury?

I had the privilege of working in a medical team at the former State Institute for the Disabled, where we worked together with an orthopaedic doctor, physiotherapist and social worker. We worked together to find out which device would be suitable for a particular patient. There was a lot of professional work, as everyone saw different things from the perspective of their own specialty, and finally we managed to get people on the move who even their relatives hadn't thought they would ride a bike. One day, two gentlemen in suits came into my bike shop, which was already operating then, saying they were starting an association. From then on they invited me to two meetings a month with their disabled members, who could try out the equipment on the spot. There were so many kinds of disabilities there – people with no legs, no hands, blind people – that I could figure out their special needs. It was a greater opportunity for professional development than learning the trade from books.

I suppose such devices are not cheap. How can you guarantee that it's worth the customer's investment?

By playing it safe. There are also rental options, precisely so that we can decide what's right based on experience. We'll keep trying until we find one that's worth investing in. And of course, safety is the most important factor, so I take full professional responsibility for my work in that sense too. I've never had a problem. I've had some people for whom I've made a yellow bike - they've asked for it - so that they can be seen in traffic. I listen to all requests, and perhaps my upbringing has given me a kind of social sensitivity towards special people.

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This is how a mother takes her daughter to school on her converted Bringanti bicycle, they cycle 25 km twice a day - Photo: the Facebook page of Anna Balogh

Just knowing them will certainly mean a unique and rich experience...

I don't operate on a business basis but on a human basis. I get this amazing attitude from these people that nothing is impossible. I've made a tricycle for an artist who paints with his mouth and feet, which he essentially steered by moving his butt. And he rode it from one end of Budapest to the other. These are miracles. Or someone in the countryside who steers a four-wheeled recumbent bicycle with his trunk, with his sightless wife sitting behind him. They go with a backpack to the next village to buy goat's milk, take it home, make goat's cheese, and sell it.

Some so many intact people constantly whine and complain, whereas these people can do anything out of sheer willpower!

I meet people with tremendous spirit and a positive outlook on life.

I understand that this includes people with autism and Down's syndrome. What's it like to be working with them?

Recently, the parents of a little girl with autism wanted a pushchair bike that they could just push her onto and push. I told them to let her ride it because the most important thing in adolescence is to release energy and have a new experience. We tried, and she rode the bike like a captain riding a horse! You could see she had a lot of stamina. She smiled. And the parents were amazed to find out at the age of 14 what their child was really capable of. And in the summer we went hiking with a little girl with Down's. We were a little worried about whether she could handle six to eight hours on the bike, but she was smiling the whole way, talking to herself and holding her head in joy, shouting "Oh my God!" In her own little world, she was having fun, and feeling safe. She trusted me and my technique, she was happy with the scenery, and she said hi to everyone, of course, not everyone said hi back. I told her to leave it, they're dopey. Her next greeting was "Hi, Dopey!"

From your stories, I also understand that the lives of many people who have been living mainly within the four walls, even for years, could be made more colourful by providing them with the opportunity to get out...

This is what I encourage the relatives with, too. And I can usually find out what can be solved by which tool. And the people involved can learn to ride the bike, just as children learn when they're young. The key is that the bike should be personalized, and for this, it is of course important that I feel the prospective owner's vibes. Children and adults with autism and Down's syndrome are extremely sensitive, they can sense the approach of another person and their movements. I remember on a camping trip, I was washing a cooking pot with a watering can when a little girl with Down's who was considered difficult to handle came up to me curiously. We communicated with glances, posture, and body language, without a single spoken word. I still shudder when I think of it. Finally, she helped, she watered the pot, too, and we felt each other's vibes. That was a miracle too. I don't know if it's a skill that can be learned or if it's a gift.

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Photo: Antal Frank

I understand that you are already making special vehicles for the elderly, thus helping yet another group of people whose difficult living conditions can be alleviated in this way.

My elderly father now needs constant care, and after fifteen years I have bought back a tandem bike for us to sit side by side. I figured, now, here is a machine for my dad, we can ride it together if he wants to, he can pedal, but he can stop if he doesn't. At 7:30 in the evening, I took it over to his house in a trailer, and he staggered out with slippers and a stick: "What's this, son?" "Tomorrow we'll take this to get bread for mum," I said.

And he, who had been living in a darkened room on medication, was there the next morning in sweats and trainers – such was the impact of the sight of the bike!

I even joked about it saying:” What happened? Did mom kick you out?” Then, because he used to love fishing, I took him to a lake tens of kilometers away. Despite his illnesses, he was as happy as can be, he felt the morning wind again, and he could see the birds, the trees, and the colours that you can't see on TV. And his blood circulation and blood pressure changed. So, yes, a special bike can be useful for elderly care, because children are the future, but we also have to take care of our parents. We shouldn't write them off, we should give them opportunities, and we should trust them because what we can give with this to them is a gift to us. That's how I give back everything they gave me.
 

The Museum of Fine Arts organized a series of lectures on India, which has been independent for seventy-five years, with the support of the Embassy of India, the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asian Art, and the Indo-Hungarian Friendship Society. Among the speakers was Dr. Imre Lázár, a cultural diplomat, who gave an insight into the lives of women of Hungarian origin who have done much for independent India and the improvement of the social status of women in the country.

A Hungarian woman among Gandhi's followers

Mrs Aladár Vértessy's name was first mentioned by Ervin Baktay in an interview for "Radio Life": "There is a Hungarian woman living in Gándhi's settlement, completely according to the Indian customs." He called her a disciple of the Mahatma's inner circle. Little is known about her life, and sources do not all agree. For example, the Magyarság newspaper wrote of her in 1930 as follows: "Mrs. Aladár Vértessy was a celebrated beauty of Transylvania until a few years ago. In  Szováta, in a beauty contest held in the presence of Maria, the wife of the Romanian King, she won first prize for her beauty. Three years before she travelled to India, where she met Ghandi and became one of the Indian leader's most ardent supporters. As it is written from Temesvár when she returned home, she sold her Transylvanian castle, her land, her large forest, all her jewellery, her art treasures, and the money she had in the banks, and then she went to India again and entered a women's monastery founded by Gandhi in the depths of a jungle. She donated all her money to the monastery. She has her hair shaved, wears a cloak of animal hair, walks barefoot, works hard, and even begs from the miserable people of the area. All that she kept of her old life was her mother's portrait. Her only happiness is to exchange letters with Ghandi two or three times a year."

A member of the Nehru family of Hungarian origin

Magdolna Friedmann fled Hungary in 1935 to escape anti-Semitism.

She married into the family of the first Prime Minister of India - Jawaharlal Nehru - in 1935, marrying Braj Kumar Nehru, the Prime Minister's cousin.

This is how she became related to the first Prime Minister's daughter and son, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, who later also became the country's leaders. After the marriage, Magdolna Friedmann took the name Sobha Nehru. She was a direct witness and participant in India's struggle for independence and worked with all her might in the creation of a new, free country. At the time of the partition of India and Pakistan, she volunteered her services to the Emergency Committee set up by the government, of which she was the only woman member. She set up a welfare organisation that provided livelihoods for refugee women by selling their embroideries and handicrafts. Sobha Nehru passed away in 2017 at the age of one hundred and eight.

The young Hungarian girl and the ageing Bengali poet

Etelka Boglár met the Bengali poet Khanti Tsandra Gosh, twenty-five years her senior, in London. He told her about India, and then they parted ways but met again a few months later. Soon afterwards, a letter arrived at the Boglárs' apartment in Ferencváros. He asked her parents for her hand in marriage. According to photographs of the wedding, the ceremony took place in 1937 in Santiniketan, India. In one of them, she is shown in a tartan dress, with a bindi, or painted dot on her forehead, sitting Turkish-style. In the other, she is standing next to a grey-haired man with glasses, her husband. In the third picture, Eta and her husband are sitting in front of the entrance to a house. Between them, looking into the lens, is a grey-haired old man, none other than the famous Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. It is interesting to note that the founder of Santiniketan was Tagore's father, the great religious reformer and Hindu philosopher. The town was expanded by his son, the poet. Etelka lived near Tagore. Even as a widow, she remained in India, worked in the university library, and did much to promote independent India in Hungary.

Missionary sister who taught hundreds of Indian women to do needlework

Etelka Marton, known monastically as Sister Lenke, joined the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary in 1930 and arrived in Jabalpur, central India, in 1934. She arrived in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) in 1968 but retained her Hungarian citizenship for the rest of her life.

Sister Lenke spent most of her time teaching poor women sent to her by priests from distant missions. The frail nun was respected and loved all her life.

On his 100th birthday in 2009, some two hundred and fifty women she once helped visited her. Over the decades of her ministry, she worked as a nurse, a mother of orphans, a sacristan, a gardener, and a catechism teacher. She taught more than five hundred poor, uneducated, and unemployed rural women to make handicrafts to earn a living. Sister Lenke died in 2011.

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Etelka Marton, aka Sister Lenke

Hungarian nun and the History of Art

Sister Edith Tömöry (1905-1998) was also a member of the order of Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. She came to Chennai (formerly Madras) in 1948, when the Stella Maris College, one of the first women's higher education institutions in independent India, was founded. In the same year, she established the Department of Arts, where she served as a senior lecturer and later as the head of the institution. Her book on the history of Indian and Western Fine Arts is still in use today.

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Sister Edith Tömöry

Mother Teresa of Olaszfa, helper of the poor in India

Born in 1921, Anna Ódor, known as Sister Teresa, was a member of the Ursulines, also known as the Order of Saint Ursula. She lived in India from 1949. During her more than half a century there, she did much for the upliftment of the poor. She built bridges, schools, hospitals, and roads, dug wells, and helped the people of India by passing on agricultural knowledge. Sister Teresa died in India in 2008, and people from many parts of the country came to her funeral. To mark the centenary of her birth, a memorial statue was unveiled in her honour in her birthplace, in Olaszfa. 

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Anna Ódor, also known as Sister Theresa

Artist mother and daughter who captured the beauty of India

The names of Erzsébet Sass-Brunner (1889-1950) and her daughter Erzsébet Brunner (1910-2001) are mentioned alongside the best-known travellers to India, namely Sándor Körösi Csoma and Ervin Baktay. They did not want to see the world but set out on a great journey out of devotion and a desire for spiritual and intellectual purification. 

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Erzséber Sass-Brunner and her husband

They arrived in India, known as the most beautiful diamond in the British crown, in 1930 and the country became their home for life. 

Mother and daughter, both painters, captured India's landscapes, sacred places, and the daily lives of ordinary people and painted the country's leading politicians.

They were attracted to the spiritual world, meditated, had visions, and were able to capture the spirit of India through their sensitivity and talent.
 

Family teamwork

Even as a child, Bálint Czimmer was learning the trade beside his father.  
"Dad is a cabinetmaker and my brother and I always helped him in the afternoons, after school, and at the weekends. He assembled the cupboards at home, which we took to the apartments and houses at weekends, where we installed the kitchen furniture. But if there were simple electrical installations, for example, we did that, too" he tells us of the early days.

It was actually by chance that he chose to become a painter. "At the end of eighth grade I couldn't decide what I wanted to be, I think a lot of people feel that way nowadays, too. My grades were not that good, so I didn't want to go to grammar school. In the end, I decided on painting and stonemasonry." That's how he ended up in Pécs, at the Mihály Pollack Technical School, which turned out to be a good choice. Bálint took a liking to interior painting, and his teachers noticed his talent and diligence.

With their encouragement, after four years of hard work, he qualified for the World Skills Championships (WordSkills) last year, where he came 5th, qualifying for this year's European Championships (EuroSkills).

At the beginning of September, in Gdansk, Poland, he stood on the top step of the podium among painters and decorative painters.

Hungary took part for the eighth time at the European vocational skills competition, also known as EuroSkills between 5-9 September. In Gdansk, 576 young people from 32 countries competed, with 26 of them representing Hungary in 22 events. In addition to Bálint Czimmer, gold medals were also awarded to János Hidvégi, web developer, Daniel Nagy, building carpenter, and Márton Offner, plumber and heating engineer. Tamás Bandúr and Zsolt Koncsik were European champions in the team competition for IT system operators.

Smooth as a sheet of paper

But what is the difference between an interior painter and a decorative painter? "We do wallpaper and door glazing in the same way as a painter, but we paint the wall so that it's almost as smooth as a sheet of paper. We then design the pattern on that surface and finally paint the motif freehand," explains Bálint Czimmer. At first glance, it sounds almost like art. "However, decorative painting is all about bound shapes, every task has to be done to the millimeter, so I think it's closer to architecture," he says.

Bálint lives with his family in Kölked, a village of 900 inhabitants. "We live in a family house where you can walk through the garden to my great-grandfather's house, which is now empty. There I took one of the rooms, scraped off the old paint, made the surface of the wall smooth, and practiced painting there." But he also commuted and travelled a lot to become a better interior painter. To prepare intensively for the competition, he had to move to Budapest. He practiced on weekdays and weekends - that's how he spent six months at the painting academy of a domestic paint manufacturer and distributor. The sponsoring company also supported his work with paints and tools.

"I practiced from morning till night, and when the competition was approaching, I had practice to work on time, so I had to schedule every second," he says.

While preparing for the competition this year, he even had to complete the graduate exams at his high school – for which he studied over the weekends, because of the tight work schedule. He took the tests in Mohács on Saturday, and on Sunday, he left for the Championship. 

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Bálint with his master Csaba Csáki - Photo: Bálint Czimmer

"I didn't want to believe it"

A world competition like this is a huge stress, but not for Bálint. "I'm not the nervous type," he says, and it shows. Nevertheless, he has received mental preparation, and at the end of each working day, he talks through the difficulties with a psychologist. "They say 60 percent depends on how mentally strong you are at the competition," he says.

At the European Championships in Poland, the painting competitors had to work for a total of 18 hours spread over three days. On the first day, they started with wallpapering: they had to prepare four colours by blending and paint them on the sample board. On the second day, they were given an hour and a half for the speed task. The last day was left for the design task, the door painting, and a project of their choice. The latter was an antique tile painting. The design task was to paint a simplified replica of a building on the waterfront in Gdansk on the wall, which was the best for Bálint and luckily the one that scored the most points. In total, he scored 84 out of 100 points to come out first place.

He was the last to be called to the stage when the results were announced. "I couldn't believe it," he recalls the big moment.

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Photo: Bálint Czimmer

A twenty-year-old Mr. Teacher

More than two months after the event, Bálint is getting used to seeing his name in the press more and more. Meanwhile, since November, he has not only been a European champion painter and decorative painter, but also an instructor, having been invited back to teach at his former school. 
"It's a strange feeling because some students are older than me. It's difficult for them to call me 'teacher', but they do try (laughs). My goal is to help those who are truly interested in the profession, and I even give them special tuition. They shouldn't be pulled down by peers who are only in the class because they have to be," he explains.

From the technical school in Pécs, they also go to train young people in Transylvania. Bálint would like to start his own business in a few years and plans to apply to the University of Pécs to become an architect.
"I recently worked in an apartment where one wall was red and the other green. I made samples of marble glue and repainted the walls to match the colour scheme.

"In just a few days you can transform an apartment to make you feel like you're entering a completely different place," he says when I ask him why he thinks painting rooms is a beautiful profession. 

"I'm grateful to my instructors, including Csaba Csáki, with whom I prepared for the competitions, and Péter Wensofszky, under whom I had an internship during my school years, he made me fall in love with the profession. Also, my family and all the people around me, because I owe this success to them," he adds. 

(Csaba Csáki, a master interior painter and decorator, was nominated for the Prima Primissima Award in the Hungarian Education and Public Education category this year.)
 

"I was already familiar with steam engines because they ran in the street where I grew up. That's why I was so interested in the little forty-centimetre steam engine, which was a locomotive: the steam engine was lying on top of the little boiler. This was the type of agricultural machinery of the old days, much larger of course, when tractors with explosive engines were not used in the fields. The man who had it in his yard later put four wheels on it and put it on rails, and made a small track in front of his house, and there it waddled along. He even let me sit on it." 

"It left such a deep impression on me that the idea of building a small steam engine has stayed with me for the rest of my life."

His parents also saw how interested Kálman was in mechanical engineering, so as a secondary school student, they enrolled him at the Jenő Landler Technical Highschool of Transmission and Transport Engineering in Újpest, which was an excellent school in the 1960s (now Bilingual Technical Highschool in Újpest). Engineers taught the theory of technical subjects, but it also had very well-equipped facilities where theory could be put into practice. The knowledge of materials was essential, and students were able to see the crystal structures of metals and alloys in the technology lab. They were taught about the properties of different materials, such as strength, hardness, the modifying effects of metal contaminants, and their utilization. They also learned about heat treatment, which creates new crystal structures; and about the transformation of materials, such as forging, pressing, casting... The school had a very well-equipped forge. "In the first year, we learned how to use hand tools in the workshops. This seems a bit redundant nowadays in the age of machines - but they have their role, I used hand tools when I was making the engine," says Kálmán Varga.

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Parts of Kálmán Varga's steam engine in the workshop - Photo: Kálmán Varga

They were also taught welding procedures, which they then learned in practice for a year, and in the final year they learned how to use machine tools such as lathes, planers and grinders. "Mechanics came into our curriculum from the second year onwards, it was a very tough subject, they said if you didn't fail it you could pass your school-leaving exams. We learned about all the different types of loads that can occur when using materials. With this knowledge, we designed and drew. We also had a subject called kinetics: we learned about free and forced motions, aerodynamics, for example; thermodynamics - the thermodynamics of steam was also the basis for the construction of my locomotive," recalls Kálmán Varga. Mathematics, Hungarian, and History were subjects for their school-leaving exams, just like in other high schools. Today, the "Landler" is a school history concept and a pride of Újpest's history.

"I've used a lot of this theoretical and practical knowledge to build the locomotive. Just one example: when I was fitting the locomotive wheel to the axle, I needed to know the dimensional tolerances that would create this tight fit. Of course, there are technical charts, but you also need to understand why something is necessary," explains Kálmán Varga.

He started his work as a standards technologist at Izzo, and then improved his knowledge of thermal engineering at the Budapest Waste Utilisation Plant, where the basis was steam - albeit at much higher temperatures and pressures than for a locomotive or engine.

"By the time I retired, I had all the theoretical and practical knowledge I needed, as well as a lot of technical resources - my own workshop, tools, materials - and free time." 

"I spent five years meticulously building the locomotive and a carriage for two passengers, all by my own hand. I made a track around our house in the garden. I would like to extend it to the back of the garden. I plan another twenty years of work: I want to build stations, a semaphore, a wagon turner, a heating house, and a rail yard." 

The locomotive is two meters long, including the wagon, which carries the water and the wood - the driver sits on top of it, and heats the engine from here while it is running. 
Apart from the working principle, no existing large locomotive type has been used as a model, it is entirely the creator's imagination. The engine driver has to feed enough steam by opening and closing a tap on the two steam engines to provide sufficient power for starts and steady progress, but without the wheels spinning. The steam injection is used to control the speed of the locomotive. The cold engine is heated with charcoal, but then only wood is added to the fire from time to time to ensure that steam is continuously generated. "That's what got me when I was a kid, putting wood on the fire," says Kálmán with a smile.

A ride in the garden with the little train is a wonderful experience, awakening in adults the child that sleeps deep in their souls and is often repressed. And the children take part in the journey, with awe-inspiring joy and sparkling eyes. In a journey that is both fairytale and real. Such an experience is very rare today. Even the creator, Kálmán Varga, almost turns back into a ten-year-old boy, and he doesn't mind if his face gets sooty as he – like a serious train driver – makes the rounds with his grandchildren or interested adult relatives behind him. And those to whom he gives the responsibility of driving the locomotive feel honoured.

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The rail road in the garden - Photo: Lívia Kölnei

Passers-by, children and adults alike, still stop by our fence and marvel at the little engine that whistles. Sometimes they even ask a question that shows how distant the steam engine is from people today, how they can't understand how it works. They ask: "I understand that it's a steam engine, but how does it work, what makes it run?"
 

István is a bearish-looking man with a strong brown beard and a tattoo on his arm carrying a two-and-a-half-year-old boy called Timoti.

Did you think about adoption before this little one came into your life?

Yes, but they were only vague thoughts, but fate decided that if I didn't move first, she would... I loved living abroad, I was happy in my little world, and I didn't feel ready to have children. But I knew I wanted to be a father one day. When my nephew's parents divorced, I remained a father figure for him, I was involved in his life from abroad, I helped him financially, and I followed his life. This thread was important to me.

What was your life like before you had the baby?

I am a CNC bender, using a microcomputer-controlled machine tool, a sought-after, marketable skill. From 2014 I lived in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and Finland for eight years. I loved living in all of those countries; I was accepted and recognized for my skills. I got to the point where I was free to choose where I worked, how much I was paid, and what accommodation I lived in. In many places it's a project-based job, so when a company stopped working on a project, I moved on, changed cities, and countries, and got to know a new climate, and new people. Finland was my favourite, because although the conditions there were very simple, the forest, and the pine trees were just a stone's throw away... I had long-lasting relationships, but it didn’t help that I had to travel a lot, or that I had to send part of my salary home to my nephew. His mother didn't earn enough to keep up a mortgaged house.

Despite this, I was carefree, free, well-off, and had a successful international career. I loved the fact that I could be at the top of my list.

Which country were you in when you found out your nephew had become a father?

I was in Germany at the time. My nephew had left school for a girl at the time, and although they were both just over 18, the baby 'checked in'. Even during the pregnancy, there were many signs that they would not be able to cope. The mother complained of self-harming thoughts at pregnancy examinations, and they were soon on the radar of the child protection system. The Family Support Service gave the mother increasingly strict terms and conditions and by the time the baby was four months old, she had to phone the Service every day. By then I had taken my nephew to work with me in Germany, teaching him my trade so that he could support his family. One morning, my phone rang, the police called me from Hungary, saying they couldn't reach my mother. They were worried about the baby, so they finally entered the property and found the mother with the four-month-old baby. They were asleep in the double bed, the mum hadn't heard the siren... We immediately left Germany, put all our stuff in the car, and travelled all day. On the way we talked about the scenery, not a word about the alarming events we had been hearing about for some time.

It seems a drastic step to quit your job, pack your bags, leave your home, and completely close down that part of your life.

Family Support invited me to the case conference to explore the problem, and it wasn't a question that I had to be there. There we learned that the mother was mentally unfit to raise the child and therefore he was being removed from the family. The question was then raised as to whether someone from the family would take him in or whether he should be placed in an orphanage.

I knew that I would have to give up my whole life if I came forward, I was overwhelmed and my heart started to race, but suddenly I said: I'm taking him home.

I am a realistic person, but at the time I was guided by my feelings, I said yes almost before I thought about it. In five minutes I became a father, although I didn't want to, not even the Virgin Mary was so unprepared for the coming of baby Jesus. Timoti was four and a half months old at the time, and I went home with him without knowing what size diaper he was using. At first, my godmother helped me, but the sore bottom, the teething, and the hospitalization due to asthma took their toll on me too. It was only supposed to be a few months. Both the baby's grandmother and my own mother advised us to give the baby up for adoption because it wouldn't work, but I was hooked by then. I couldn't bear not to see him, not to hold him.

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Photos: István

All of a sudden you find yourself with a five-month-old baby. How was your first night?

Getting up at night was a new experience, the intermittent sleeping, bathing a poopy baby at night... Changing diapers, bathing, lulling, feeding, everything was new but I did it on instinct.

How did the baby take it when a big man with a stubbly chin just took over from an 18-year-old girl?

Timoti loved me from the first moment he met me and grinned at me with his mouth full. It was me who chose his name when he was born. However, after a few months, we had to move out of my godmother's house because she was collapsing under the weight of what had happened. Eventually, the family services told me I could choose to move into a Family Transition Home, find a flat to rent, or have the child removed from the family. I didn't want to let Timoti down, so we got out of the situation by renting a small apartment in Vaja, a town of barely a few thousand people. It took two days to decide and move, and here in Vaja, we finally have our own little life together. In Jászberény, Timoti was already in daycare and I had a job, but here I had to start looking for a job all over again. It was not easy to get my employer to accept that I was raising a small child on my own, that I would have to take sick leave from time to time, and that I could not work three shifts.

I never thought in my life that life with a baby could be so difficult, hats off to the women!

Do you think that your life will be like this?

In our two years together we have grown together and I am everything to Timoti. If he were taken away from me, I'd have my life back, but it wouldn't be good for him. If I knew he was going to a place where he would be loved and cared for, I might be able to reconcile with that, but there is no such place. In the meantime, I have become a father, and it overrides all my rational consideration that no matter how many rituals I use to put him to sleep in his own bed, he will appear at night, crawl into my bed, and cuddle my neck. All the difficulties disappear when he starts saying, "Daddy!" I was the first to see him get up and walk, and I heard his first words. These are things that are not rational, but they work.

What are your plans for the long run?

I hope to get a job abroad and take my little boy with me. It's hard because in my profession it's hard to find a job with only day shifts. So far, my experience here in Hungary is that although employers are impressed with my skills and experience, as soon as they find out that I have a kid at home, they back out.

For me, the biggest help right now would be a secure job.

I think, maybe a mother can best understand what the difficulty is for me in being pretty much cooped up here with Timoti, with no adult activities. And women aren't exactly happy when they find out I'm a single father. Grocery store, post office, doctor's office - these are the places of my life. Timoti is adored in the village, at the nursery, and at the shop, he's the favourite everywhere.

"Terrible is the temptation to do good," ponders the maid in Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle, who has one minute to decide to save the abandoned baby, taking on the role of the fallen girl in a male-centric society. One minute to make a decision that will last a lifetime. And even today, some people experience this kind of temptation to do the right thing.
 

On a late autumn day, eight people are waiting on the quay in Újpest, between warehouses built into the retaining wall. One of them is a young woman who is being smeared with jam from a jar by Raoul Wallenberg. Meanwhile, Géza Soos, Pál Szalai, Budapest’s police commander, Wallenberg's driver, two armed officers, and the woman's husband wait for their guard to give the signal. They are waiting for a lorry on which the Germans are reportedly transporting prisoner-of-war airmen and Polish Jews. 

When the signal arrives, the woman crawls out into the road, with the currant jelly that looks like blood on her head, and waves to the approaching car, asking for help.

The lorry slows down and then stops. The driver and his armed guard get out, but at that moment the hiding men surround them and disarm them and the two German soldiers guarding the prisoners in the back. The 14 freed prisoners are given civilian clothes and taken to a safe place. The four soldiers are also re-dressed, hidden by Géza Soos, and released in December in exchange for the release of 40 Jews. This 1944 incident was described by Lajos Koncz in the magazine Beszélő, based on Wallenberg's diary.

This was not a single incident, Géza Soos dedicated his entire life to helping and saving others and to doing what was in the best interest of his country and what the Bible instructed him to do. He is an undeservedly forgotten hero of twentieth-century Hungarian history.

The right way is to help

– You're not going to strangle this child – said Géza Soos, then a teenager, to a desperate pregnant woman in the Mária Valéria slum.
– But who will get him food? Who will give him clothes? Who will baptize him?
– We will.
This is how Géza Soos and Zsófia Naszádi, two high school students from Kőbánya, became the godparents of the unborn child, little Zsófia, and the saviours of her life.

Géza Soos, born in 1912, was a student at the Szent László High School in Kőbánya, Budapest, where he and his peers regularly helped families in the Auguszta and Mária Valéria slums.

He became involved in Reformed youth organizations at an early age, serving as secretary general of the Soli Deo Gloria Reformed Students' Union at the age of 22 and president at the age of 24. He also gave the graduation speech of his class, and already then he expressed the idea that the spread of poverty and disease was "driving Hungarian life deeper and deeper with a loud avalanche", and that the only way forward was to help. In this 1930 school speech, Géza Soos's whole life is already contained.

At the same time, he was never satisfied with himself, he wrote in one account: "I was SDG's most despicable worker [...] but the Lord's grace is greater than our weaknesses." Géza Soos, after graduating from law school in 1935, continued to travel the country while working, speaking to young people about his faith, the social situation of Hungarian society, and the Nazi threat to the nation.

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Géza Soos with his parents, sister Edit Soos, and aunt in 1934 - Photo: sdg.org.hu

In capital letters in Wallenberg's calendar

The outbreak of the Second World War found the young official working in the Information Department under Prime Minister Pál Teleki, and after Teleki's suicide, he was transferred to the Foreign Ministry. He used his government positions to counter the German advance, rescue the persecuted, and assess the possibility of a way out of the war. In 1943, he helped to organize the Conference at the Soli Deo Gloria Reformed Students' Association camp in the village of Balatonszárszó. Géza Soos guaranteed the government that the occasion would not be used for anti-government activities.

After the German occupation of Hungary, the rescue of the persecuted Jews became a priority, and people were driven to the SDG camps in the diplomatic car acquired by Géza Soos, where as many persecuted people as possible were hidden.

But the homes of the members and leaders of the Soli Deo Gloria Reformed Students' Association and the Hungarian Community, which later became famous for the trial, were also full of hidden people. Pastors, priests, state employees, and secret printers produced fake baptismal certificates for Jews. Soos played a very important role in getting the report, known as the Auschwitz Protocol, to Governor Miklós Horthy, who stopped the deportation of Jews from Budapest.

When Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg arrived in Budapest, one of the first things he did was to contact Géza Soos, whose name was written in capital letters in his diary. An example of their joint activities is the story told at the beginning of this article. For understandable reasons, there is only limited information on exactly how many people they saved.

Stealing a military aircraft

Although the Germans did not take direct action against Géza Soos, who worked in the Foreign Ministry, for a long time, after the Arrow Cross takeover he was forced to go into hiding, for example in the attic of Pastor Dezső Fónyad in Monor. After the arrest of the leaders of the resistance, including Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky, Géza Soos said goodbye to his pregnant wife Ilona Tüdős, and set off with his fellows to carry out a plan worthy of an action film.

On the night of December 8-9, 1944, a small group snuck onto the military airfield in Pápa, climbed onto a Heinkel He-111 bomber plane with German supremacy markings waiting there, and took off at dawn, stealing the military plane in the middle of a war.

It was not only the potential chasers that they had to worry about, Allied forces were already flying in the opposite direction over the Adriatic Sea. Off the coast of Italy, American fighter jets forced them to land. An interesting group got off the plane: Air Force Major Domokos Hadnagy with his wife and their one-and-a-half-year-old child, first lieutenant Árpád Toperczer, Sergeant Sándor Rakovich, an engine mechanic, Géza Soos and J. A. Bentinck, a Dutch lieutenant who had escaped from German captivity. Among other evidence, they brought the English translation of the Auschwitz Protocol to the Allies, including news of the Hungarian resistance.

An honest man cannot cooperate with the communists

The passengers of the plane were under suspicion, and interrogated for months by British and American officers as prisoners of war. Meanwhile, in Budapest, Géza Soos's daughter was born, and Soos's mother and elder daughter Ildi died in the besieged city. The next time he met his family was in Geneva after the war. It was here that he completed his theology studies after a brief attempt to return home. He wrote: "In 1946, in Budapest, the Communists again tried to kill me because I refused to join the communist party or at least sign the declaration of obedience. [...] I soon realized that there is no way out: an honest man cannot cooperate with the communists."
In Germany, he was engaged in the pastoral care of some 14,000 Hungarians, as well as Czech, Ukrainian, Polish, and Latvian Protestants who were stranded there. In November 1948, he travelled 3,380 km by car and 1,750 km by train, finding some of them in such misery that he gave them his last pennies and sometimes even his change of clothes. In 1951, at the invitation of the Hungarian-Americans, he moved to the United States with his wife and five children.

He has cared for the diaspora, taught at universities and lectured in church and other communities. He also became one of the editors of the Új Magyar Út (’New Hungarian Way’) magazine, writing articles.

He became known to the entire Hungarian immigrant community.

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Géza Soos baptizes the child of a Hungarian refugee family in Germany - Photo: Mint a Jézus Krisztus jó vitéze ('As the Good Soldier of Jesus Christ')... Bp., 1989

The only way home

On September 5, 1953, despite a raging storm, Géza Soos got into a car with Ferenc Koszorús to preach at the Pittsburgh Reformed Church. Due to poor visibility after a bend in the road, Soos' car suddenly crashed into the bridge abutment. Ferenc Koszorús was unconscious and seriously injured, and Soos rushed to a nearby family home to seek help. He helped lift Koszorús into the ambulance and then sat down next to the driver. On the way, he complained of feeling unwell and then fell off the seat. At the hospital, only his death could be confirmed. He was only 41 years old. Géza Soos was laid to rest in Ligonier, Pennsylvania. At his funeral, Albert Wass said about him: "A giant tree has fallen, Hungarians! A huge mountain has fallen: a cliff. Hungarians all over the world: if you want to repay him for what he did for you, follow the path he marked. Every Hungarian should know - these are the words of Géza Soos - that there is only one way home. The way of love and humility in Christ."
 

From autumn in Pest to summer in Melbourne

The 1956 Summer Olympics were held in Melbourne, Australia. The legendary Hungarian water polo team, which would have had a good chance of winning this time too, arrived that year in a rather shattered condition. They were both mentally and physically exhausted because, by the time the Olympic flame was lit in Melbourne on 11 November, the flame of the Hungarian Revolution had already been extinguished in blood by Russian tanks.

The national team was due to depart on 24 October, but the French airline carrying the Olympic team did not take the risk of landing at Ferihegy, Hungary, in those turbulent times. In the end, they agreed to go as far as Prague, Czechoslovakia, and, after some delays, to get the Hungarian team to Australia. In order for the water polo team to catch the bus to Czechoslovakia, team captain Dezső Gyarmati had to be dragged back from the barricades, and young Ervin Zádor, who wanted to say goodbye to his mother, had to walk 25 kilometers across the war-torn countryside to reach the camp.

Finally, the bus did roll out, with the players on the seats deep in thought.

The Hungarian national team had not been able to have training in a pool for three weeks by then and were waiting in a closed training camp to see what the politicians would decide about their fate. They didn't know whether they would even make it to the Olympics, just as they didn't know what would happen to their loved ones at home, and if they got out of the country to the West, whether they would be able to come back. Everything was uncertain, except that if they could play, they would do whatever it took to win for the national flag! The Hungarian team arrived almost at the eleventh hour from a dreary November to a glorious Melbourne summer. There was no time for the planned acclimatization either, with the stake matches starting soon. In the final of three, Yugoslavia was joined by the Soviet Union, and news of the match attracted an incredible crowd to the pool.

Water meant freedom

What did water polo mean and what does it still mean for Hungarians? The Hungarian public and the Hungarian soul have always looked upon the polo players as heroes, and they have repaid this unreserved love with wonderful results. This small country, which has neither ocean nor sea, produces water sports champions every year, and in water polo Hungary, despite its small size, is a world power, even a legend. Water polo is not just a matter of stamina and endurance, but also of strategy and cunning. Water polo players can swim several kilometers in a match without being able to rest on the floating medium; the ball is whizzing along like a car on a highway, passes are quick and accurate; and underwater, there is a constant battle for position. In water polo, as in hockey, only flags are issued for flagrant infringements, and the water covers up a lot... That's why it hasn't become a sport for the reserved Englishmen, for example, but it's in the blood of Hungarians.

When a muscular player rises out of the water up to his waist and throws, we can easily imagine that he’d even be able to walk on that water if he wanted to. 

The sophisticated and aggressive game is close to the Hungarian mindset, and over the years it has become a symbol of Hungarian uniqueness. "In Hungary, every water has a different taste," said our Olympic champion Miklós Martin, nicknamed Buci ("Bun") by his teammates because of his bun-round face.

During the socialist era, sport played a prominent role in Hungarian public life and communities, as it remained almost the only legal form of self-expression. Professional sportsmen and women were much freer than the average person, they could travel beyond the Iron Curtain and only had to work on paper. However, these privileges went hand in hand with the political leadership's use of athletes for its own propaganda purposes, using their achievements to justify the success and legitimacy of the socialist system. This special status offered even players from disadvantaged, aristocratic backgrounds hopes of avoiding marginalization. Water polo opened doors and created a world of its own, which was, and maybe still is, passed down from father to son. Water meant freedom.

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The Hungarian delegation at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Melbourne - Photo: Fortepan/Imre Sárosi

The pool was simmering beneath the surface

During the communist era, the excellence of the water polo players was envied even by the leader of the Soviet party state, Stalin, who sent the Soviet water polo team to Hungary to learn.

The Hungarian training program included skiing, on which swimming and ball-handling techniques were later built. The Russian coaches were diligently taking notes in our stands, learning how the Hungarians solved all the elements from movement, how they shot using a turn, and then copied the training plans and took all the knowledge home. At the Helsinki Olympics, there was even a possibility that the Hungarian team might concede the match to the Soviet team. It was not their idea... By 1956, the Russian team was a serious threat to the Hungarian boys, and they were beginning to outgrow their masters.

"Whatever you decide, let's win the Olympics first," captain Dezső Gyarmati told the troubled team, many of whom were considering not returning to Hungary after the Games. And the match began. In the Melbourne stands on that legendary afternoon - 6 December 1956, a month after the Hungarian Revolution was crushed in blood - eight thousand people packed into six thousand seats, many of them paying £30-£40 for a two-pound ticket. The spectators were aware of what was happening in Hungary and stood with the oppressed state, whose citizens were trying to win their freedom against a powerful aggressor.

The Russian national team already received a huge backlash when they came out of the dressing room with CCCP-emblazoned on their jerseys. The same inscription was also on the Soviet tanks that the Australian audience saw on the news... The humid atmosphere was extremely tense, which the Swedish referee was well aware of. In the first quarter, the Hungarians scored from a penalty that the referee had retaken after the failed shot, and at the moment of its launch, the Soviet goalkeeper was not even fully prepared for the shot. The Soviet players' tempers were running high, with the pool simmering with tension beneath the surface. 

"I felt like I had five liters of soda fizzing in my head," said Ervin Zádor, the youngest player on the team.

A bloody outcome 

The Hungarian team used a new strategy in the game, which they had come up with the night before in the hotel: a zone defense, which had never been used in the pool at the Olympics before. They also defended the forwards with a tight man-to-man defense. This unexpected strategy confused the opponents, who could not shoot at all from close range, and their long-range shots were defended by Otto Boros. This really unnerved the opposing players. Georgij Msvenieradze, the two-handed shooter, started swearing and fighting incredibly in the water, and the Hungarian players replied to it neither silently nor idly. We were leading 4-0 with only a few minutes left in the game when the players switched to a violent style.

Ervin Zádor admitted later that he had not used his most sophisticated vocabulary, and although Valentyin Prokopov, the giant Soviet player, probably did not speak Hungarian, he broke the skin under Zádor's eyes with a full-force underwater elbow strike. He rose out of the water towering like an angry Loch Ness monster. It was a big blow, bleeding profusely, and it quickly stained the pool pink. The crowd roared, and at that moment the Hungarian player became an epic symbol of the Hungarian fight for freedom.

With good strategic sense, he did not get out of the water on the dressing room side, but walked along the front of the grandstand, blood pouring from his eyes and running down his wet chest, almost covered in blood on his upper body.

The photograph taken of him at that moment spread around the world and became a symbol of the crushing of a small state.

As emotions ran out of control, the referee called the game off one minute before time, and the Hungarians won. The crowd jumped over the barrier, the Soviet players walked out amidst a line of police, and the usual handshakes didn't happen. Spectators chanted "Hungary, Budapest!". And the ball was floating gently on the water.

A lesser-known detail of the story is that the match against the Soviet Union was not the Olympic final: it came afterward against the very talented Yugoslavian national team, and Ervin Zádor was not allowed to play in this match, despite his pleas to his coach. Propokov's huge blow could not change that match, but it still threatened our Olympic gold medal. But the Hungarian team won that match too. We showed the world that in conditions where seven men fight seven men, where the rules are the same for everyone, where there is no dictatorship, no informer network, and no iron curtain, we are capable of winning. Without tanks – with a ball.

The members of the Hungarian water polo team at the 1956 Olympics were: Antal Bolvári, Ottó Boros, Dezső Gyarmati, István Hevesi, László Jeney, Tivadar Kanizsa, György Kárpáti, Kálmán Markovits, Mihály Mayer, István Szívós and Ervin Zádor.

There are two types of Lego players. One follows the instructions and is amazed to see a miniature version of the Arc de Triomphe, for example. The other uses engineering thinking and artistic creativity to create something new. When did you realize that the world could be more exciting if you sometimes leave the instructions?

I got my first Lego set when I was two or three years old, and I started building from my own ideas very early on, but it was only five or six years ago that I started designing things that I was happy to share with others. Of course, before that, I built a lot from the manual, because that's how you learn how to start building in a way that makes the end result stable.

You have three siblings, are there no fights at home over the bricks?

My sister is not so keen on Lego. I've managed to "infect" my two brothers to some extent, although they're not as big fans as I am, but sometimes they come to me and we build together.

Which structures capture your imagination the most?

I'm more interested in vehicles, I mainly build cars, I don't really like static things. The idea for the foosball table came to me because I wanted to design a structure that would not only be an exhibit and just stand there, but something you could play with.

How did the idea of a tabletop foosball become a real set?

Ideas can be submitted to the LEGO Ideas site and if they receive at least 10,000 votes, they will be considered by the company. I think these designs make the most interesting Lego sets: I've seen typewriters and pianos made from LEGO bricks. I submitted this for a separate competition, where the theme was sport.

My tabletop foosball table won the public vote, but the really big opportunity was that the company wanted to make a set from my idea out of the many entries.

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Donát Fehérvári – Photo: László Katona

How should we imagine the designing process? Do you just pour the Lego onto the carpet and start stacking the bricks?

When I build, I don't usually use traditional blocks, but Technic parts, and I keep all my pieces and parts in separate boxes. However, on the Ideas site, you build things digitally. For example, when doing the tabletop foosball, I never built that with real parts. There's 3D software specifically designed for Lego building, and all the parts are available in unlimited quantities, so the building is really limited only by your imagination.

Once you’ve been selected, have you been involved in the planning process, too?

They contacted me online and that's how they told me I was the winner. Later they showed me two prototypes. The first one was completely different from the final one because it was designed to be bigger, but because of stability problems the whole thing had to be squeezed a bit. My original design was more similar to the first design, with eleven against eleven, but for the reasons I mentioned earlier, in the end, there were only ten players on the board. When I came up with an idea, they were open to it, but I had little input because the company has really professional designers who know what makes a good set.

In 2022, on the list of Highlights of Hungary, you were nominated by Vivien Mádai, television program producer, editor, and presenter.  How did you take it that your story became well-known and popular in Hungary?

I was very surprised when I found out that I had been nominated, I didn't expect to win the Family Friendly Special Award at all. There was an award ceremony in Budapest where I was able to go and meet a lot of people.

It was great to see the diversity and how many people in Hungary have great ideas.

Do you think it's possible that in a few years, you'll still be designing structures, but not with Lego bricks, but with screws, pedals, electronic cables, tubes, and indicators?

I want to work as a development engineer in the motor industry. I really hope that my dream will come true and that I will be able to continue creating new things.
 

Were there any similar efforts to protect the health of musicians before Kodály? Clara Schumann, for example, wrote in her diary notes that her father, who was also her piano teacher, advised her to spend as much time walking outdoors as she spent practising, to strengthen her nerves.

Yes, and what a broad-minded advice this is! Of course, a young musician who practices for six hours today cannot spend six hours walking in the woods... I miss that. Musicians who have studied in Russia tell me that a teacher who is supervising keeps walking past the practice rooms, and knocks on the door of the room in which the instrument stops playing because the work cannot stop. Those who can endure this will go on to win prestigious competitions - if they can.

It is a destructive approach, where it is not talent that counts, but stamina, and which makes breakdown inevitable.

For example, Leon Fleisher, the famous American pianist, developed a neurological disease at a young age that caused his right hand to go into spasm. He was forced to switch to left-handed playing and continued his career as a conductor and teacher. It was only thirty-five years later that he managed to return to the concert stage and played with both hands. Eckart Altenmüller, physician and musician professor in Hanover, believes that the main cause of this serious musical illness is perfectionism, where ambition is greater than strength.

When I'm sitting in the concert hall, listening to the music flowing, I have no idea that musicians often have to go through a lot of pain to play in the orchestra... Can there be pain, feelings of deprivation, even severe burnout behind the performance?

I developed a hand injury in music high school that made me miss three months of practice. No one could help me because we don't have any kind of special medical help or therapy for musicians. Our doctors do not learn about occupational injuries associated with musicians. The aching hand needs to rest, so they put it in a cast, but when they take the cast off and the musician starts practicing, the condition relapses. The immobility causes the tissues to weaken and become even more vulnerable. The surgeon will operate on the inflamed lump in the tendon sheath, but the structure in that area will become weaker and the strain will reappear when it is used again.

As a music academy teacher, Kodály saw many of his great colleagues and students fall ill and drop out of the profession. The master urged the Academy's leaders to find some kind of help. At that time, there was no physical education or swimming lessons for musicians – that, of course, made us, the students, delighted. Everybody hated PE, and we dreaded even the thought of a vault or a speeding basketball. The physical education of musicians is not always the best these days either. Recently, one music high school had a hand fracture every week. Kodály, who was a regular sportsman, once explained what the physical education of musicians should be like. Something that refreshes, relaxes, revitalizes physically and mentally, and counterbalances the great nervous-physical strain. It was at Kodály's initiative that the management of the Academy of Music asked Dr. Géza Kovács, a scientific researcher in physical education, to attend to the musicians' complaints.

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Dr. Géza Kovács in the 1950s and Dr. Zsuzsanna Pásztor, who further developed his method - Photo: kovacsmethod.com and dr. Zsuzsanna Pásztor

Is it possible to physically measure the load on musicians?

It can be compared to a person doing hard physical work. Kodály once commented on this, saying that the work of a musician, expressed in metric kilograms, beats the performance of a heavy physical worker. I myself once tried to measure roughly the power required to play a heavy chord on the piano, such as in one of Chopin's études. I saw a scale at the post office, and put my hand on it and pressed on it as if I were playing this Chopin on the piano. The pointer jumped to 15 kilograms.

This Chopin etude is full of such chords for six pages, which led me to conclude that a practicing pianist moves tons in an afternoon.

If someone's hands are not trained enough, they will inevitably suffer an injury. If a musician is not mentally able to cope with the strain, there are also subjective symptoms and signs, losing the will to work, and becoming dull and grey.

Grey?

Yes, the musical production becomes grey, and boring, the heart and soul are gone, and the playing that used to be so exciting fades away. Fatigue overrides even the most beautiful musical ideas.

I mean, you don't think of musicians as people who have just come from the gym. They are fragile, sensitive people whose physical bodies are more a contour of their souls...

The image of the pale, thin, sensitive artist is more the romantic ideal of the 19th century. I, on the other hand, teach my music academy students that they need to have the physical condition of an astronaut and nerves of steel. Our children today work under tremendous pressure, they need to be strong and have an endurable working capacity. Now we have our wonderful Kovács method, but still, musicians have a lot of problems. Our survey last year with 15-20-year-old students showed that eight out of ten children were already struggling with some kind of injuries, and one child had three to five different symptoms. It is not only problems with playing instruments, not only hand pain or disorders of the facial muscles of wind players and the vocal cords of singers, but also serious neurological disorders such as depression, panic attacks, anxiety, and even suicidal tendencies are common. Youth is the golden age of human life, a time of hope and happiness, and even then it can bring so much pain and suffering!

It takes around 16 years for a musician to become a stage-ready performer or a qualified teacher. By the time they reach this stage, they are already suffering from serious health problems if they don't get help.

How did Dr Géza Kovács approach the task?

He gave exercise classes and counselling. The exercise classes started very interestingly. Due to the lack of suitable rooms, the classes were held in the Small Hall of the Music Academy, now Solti Hall, where there was hardly any free space, and the music students had to work out between the rows of chairs. The professor worked with each one of them individually, telling them how to practice, how to organize their work and rest, how to use hot and cold water, advised them to go outside often to get some fresh air, and also talked about nutrition. Everyone who went to see him got well.

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P.E. in the Small Hall of the Music Academy, 1964. - Photo: dr. Zsuzsanna Pásztor

How did this become music pedagogy?

I was one of his clients being the sickest student at the Academy of Music. After I recovered with the help of Professor Kovács, I thought that if this method worked for me, it would work for my students, too. Initially, I just wanted to use some of the elements of the movement program as a relaxation before music lessons for the children who were tired after school. We played with balloons and balls for a few minutes each class. After about four months, something happened that I hadn't expected. Even the most clumsy child developed a dexterity in his hands. It was a miracle, because the initial stage of learning to play an instrument is usually a very difficult one, and it takes a long time to get the instrument to sound nicely in the hands of little children. But this method speeds up the process considerably.

It's a kind of "musical brain surgery" that transforms the nervous system: it builds into the brain programmes that lay the foundations for musical skills.

Did you have to endure any problems, offences?

Oh, yes. There were plenty of difficulties with the superiors and with the authorities. At first, parents complained, saying that they were not paying for their children to play ball in music class. My director, bless his memory, who supported my experimental work, provided a courtyard classroom with no view from the outside. It was a tough struggle, sometimes the experimental program became a real 'secret curriculum'. Today it is an accepted university subject, under the name of Music Movement Development.

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An exercise of the Kovács Method - Photo: Kovács Method Facebook page

I have seen a photograph of Dr. Géza Kovács participating in an autopsy with his students.

Dr. Miklós Réthelyi, Professor of Anatomy, former Rector of the Medical University (former Minister), was a participant in our movement classes for many years. At our request, he regularly gave us autopsy demonstrations. These demonstrations were part of our theoretical education. The Kovács Method teacher trainees still receive solid anatomical training today.

Can the Kovács method help with stage fright?

Of course it can! Warming up before a performance can have a magical effect on the nervous musician. Of course, let's not imagine the musicians jumping up and down in their formal dresses! This gentle warm-up calms down the mad adrenaline rush that shakes the musician's whole body before a performance. The movement acts as a kind of beneficial oxygen spray, normalizing hormone- and nerve control.

During the gentle warm-up movements, the character simply forgets to be nervous.

The dreadful vegetative symptoms of stage fright, the tremors, the pounding heartbeat, the anxiety, the visceral complaints disappear, leaving nothing but eager excitement and focused attention.

Dr Géza Kovács was famous not only for his methods but also for his charismatic personality and radiance.

He was a loving, reassuring, and motivating person. He was characterized by thoughtfulness, gentleness, empathy, and infinite modesty. He often stressed that he had only established his method and would not have time to develop it. Indeed, he laid the foundations, I put up the walls, and then my students will put the roof on the building. Let this method be a treasure for everyone, let it be introduced into mainstream education! This is no longer a dream. The Kovács method has been included in the training of special needs teachers since 2007. Teachers use it effectively in the education of children with atypical development.

I saw a skipping rope, and a colourful balloon in the pictures, and I even felt like going in for a lesson.

Games, laughter, balloons - these also help you recover physically and mentally. The relaxing balloon game is undoubtedly one of the most attractive elements of the Kovács Method training program. But in addition to them, there are tens of thousands of strengthening, relaxing, stretching and dexterity-building movements., that make up the whole repertoire.

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Dr. Zsuzsanna Pásztor receiving the Knight's Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit, civil division, in 2023 - Owner of the picture: dr. Zsuzsanna Pásztor

I can't resist asking: didn't you fall a little in love with Professor Kovács?

Of course, I did, and I was not the only one. He had such an attractive personality that he charmed everyone, but he was a family man, a family-loving man, a stable personality, and extremely fair to everyone, so we admired him from afar. He had morals and infinite integrity. That's why people took his advice. I was a very weak student in fragile health, so my piano teacher József Gát sent me to him. However, there was no way I wanted to go to the 'Kovács lessons', because I had terrible experiences of gymnastics lessons in high school. But I finally convinced myself to go to the Small Hall of the Music Academy, where he was teaching.

I watched, fascinated, as the colourful balloons floated towards the ceiling like planets in a planetarium.

It's not a PE class, it's a miracle, I said to myself, and I felt I would be stuck with it for life.

Dr. Zsuzsanna Pásztor was born on 14 June 1935 in Szeged. She spent her childhood in Szentes, where she started to study music. She completed her high school studies in Budapest, at the Béla Bartók Conservatory, and graduated from the Academy of Music in 1960 with a degree in piano pedagogy. She is a lecturer at the Department of Teacher Training at the Liszt Academy of Music and at the Institute of Art Mediation and Music at the Faculty of Humanities of the Eötvös Loránd University. For her high quality work she has been awarded the János Apáczai Csere Prize, the Príma Prize and the Knight's Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit, civil division.
 

What did you want to be as a child?

At the age of six or seven, an architect. I even designed and drew specific house plans at home with a ruler. Then, in fourth or fifth grade, I had the idea of becoming a hairdresser! My mum reassured me that she would support me in anything I wanted to do, as long as I was happy when I decided to become a coach instead.

You thought about it so early?

When I was twelve, I decided that this was what I wanted to do. I was already playing judo and we didn't have a club coach, so I joined the younger ones as a coach and accompanied them to competitions. But I had always been playing sports from the age of six, – water polo, gymnastics, wrestling, judo – and, like all sporty kids, I wanted to be an Olympic champion. That plan went off the rails...

How did you find out that something was wrong?

As a judo player, I was already at the top of the sport, and a member of the junior national team when my eyesight started to deteriorate rapidly.

At 16, I was sitting at school and I couldn't see the board... At first, I joked about it, saying that everyone was writing and I had nothing to do because I couldn't see, but then we went from one doctor to the other to find out what was going on. First, I was diagnosed with a type of corneal lesion that cannot be corrected with glasses.

What is the name of the disease?

Keratoconus. The essence is that the cornea is thicker or thinner, more or less mountainous or valley-like, and you can't do anything about these "topographical conditions". I went to a doctor who thought that there was a genetic predisposition behind the development of the disease, but he examined every available family member and found no evidence of it. In fact, it’s never really been found out what the cause was.

Are both your eyes affected in the same way?

No, they were different. I first heard the name of the disease around 1991, when I was 17, and within a year or two I had laser eye surgery on my left eye, with which I could only see four or five percent at that time. The right one was still functioning at 30 percent. For a few months after the operation, the left one came up to that level, too but then it suddenly started to fall back. Then I found out that there was another problem...

What exactly?

In the meantime, a glaucoma had developed, and there was really nothing to be done. I can't see with my left eye today, the right one has been at six to eight percent – for decades now. There is no medical explanation for why it has remained so unchanged, because the disease is supposed to progress gradually, with four stages, the fourth being blindness.

Can you help me imagine how much you can see with your right eye?

Well, at an eye test, you have to sit down in a chair and read the numbers on a board, right? If you can read the largest number on it, that means you can see ten percent, but I can't even see that, maybe only from close up.

For me, there is no such thing as sharp, everything is blurred. I can't see the faces, only the shape of the head.

How did you learn to live with that? You seem very positive to me now, but I guess it wasn't always like that.

I think people around me would agree that it was relatively easy for me to cope. I'm not going to lie, there were minor lows, but not prolonged traumatic periods. Maybe because it was a process, it didn't happen overnight. The body gets used to the new condition. Now that you ask, I remember that in the mid-nineties I took a team of children to a competition and a girl sitting opposite me asked me why I read so strangely. We started talking and she remarked on how naturally I spoke about it. Of course, because that's my natural condition.

As you were coming through the parking lot towards the building and we met, I wouldn't have guessed from the way you moved that you were visually impaired. You didn't look unsteady at all, you didn't have a white cane...

In the sport of the visually impaired, they say, our residual vision is measurable. But how we use that residual is immeasurable. It's very individual, how you experience it. I think I can see from memory. With my brain, because I can hardly see with my eyes. When I went to the doctor for the disability check-up, the doctor asked me who I came with. I said, no one, I came alone. Where's the white cane? I don't have one. But there’s no way you can get around with your kind of eyesight! I said well, I don’t know how I do it, but I manage. I had a book by Attila József in my hand, and he asked me what it was for. I said, I had to wait an hour, so I spent it usefully. But can I read? I said, well they’d taught me in first grade at the elementary school and, amazingly, I haven't forgotten it ever since. He says, stop joking man, there's no such thing. I say, there must be because I read.

Are your other senses and abilities more alert?

I use my memory more effectively.

In training, I can identify everyone from a distance by their body type, hair colour, belt colour, but I have to keep all this information in mind.

What happened to competing after the diagnosis?

I stopped for a year and a half or maybe for two years, and as the coaching job became uncertain, too, I went to study physical education and geography at ELTE and got my diploma. History would have been a better choice besides physical education, and I was also good in Russian and English, but I couldn't do them for different reasons. During my university years, a doctor suggested that in my condition I should give up teaching altogether, but one of my teachers at a watersport camp encouraged me by saying: "man, you're not giving up, are you?" For those words, I will always be grateful. After graduation, I taught for four years in a village near my home until I learned that I could play judo as a visually impaired person and even participate in the Paralympics. I was at a coaching course in Rome when I found out that there would soon be a qualifying European Championships to qualify for Sydney.
I entered with Gábor Vincze, who is also blind, we started preparing, and we both won medals – I became the European champion – so we both qualified for the Olympic Games. It is true that I lost my job because they did not know about my illness, which I could no longer hide as a Paralympian. I admit that I avoided the medical check-ups until then, and they refused to employ a PE teacher who could barely see.

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Photo: Adrián Szász

Meanwhile, you were already teaching at the School for the Blind, and then you focused on sports again...

And at the same time I was also training intact competitors, having graduated from the Hungarian University of Sports Science earlier.

At the School for the Blind, I taught the children to fall in a special training course, because many wouldn't even imagine how useful this kind of knowledge is when you are blind for preventing accidents...

By the way, when I teach judo to blind kids, I treat them like sighted children, except that when teaching technique, I have to hold their hands and feet and show them the movement. It's not easy, because judo is a difficult sport even for the sighted, and there is an opponent who usually wants to push us out... But when there were 15-20 blind children in the room, I didn't lead any of them to the other, they shouted and found each other by sound.

How did you become a Paralympic bronze medallist?

From the moment I knew there was a way for me to enter, my dream was to win a medal in the Paralympic Games since I couldn't do it at the Olympics. We trained as hard as the others, went through the same training camps. We did the combat training together with the able-bodied sportsmen, but we did the conditioning training with Gabi Vincze. I could not win a medal in Sydney, so I wanted to stop, but the national captain convinced me that the four years, which at the time seemed like forever – 1,400 days! – would pass quickly. Then it really did go by fast until Athens, where my dream came true in 2004!

Even though I was after an injury, it all came together: the bronze medal was a complete success.

Coaching has taken over the main role in your life for quite some time now. Since 2011, you have also been working as a coach for the Hungarian junior national team – and I want to stress that we are talking about the intact team.

Coaching is also a dream come true, even though I left the country in 2008 for a year and a half, moving to Ireland. I wanted to try myself in a different environment, where I became a fitness instructor. Besides improving my English, this detour also built my personality. I also started to appreciate characteristics that I previously hadn't, and when I came home I had the confidence to apply for the coaching the junior national team. Before that, I never thought I would be chosen, but I was. Some people doubted me, but time has proved me right: I've been doing it for thirteen years now. I am responsible for the men, but we also work with the women.

Since 2012, you have also been in charge of the visually impaired division as national captain...

The intensity of this varies because we haven't had a Paralympic judo competitor since Rio 2016, but we could have one again in Paris. I also chaired the Judo Committee of the International Federation of Sports for the Visually Impaired for eight years, and after Tokyo, another Hungarian took over from me. Since then I have been responsible for education on the committee. This is enough, alongside my other activities, so my family could see me sometime, with whom I live in Cegléd. Because I also like being at home.

How long have you been a father?

My partner and I have been together since 2016, and this is also related to the sport, as Anita's two older children, now in university, also played judo. Our little boy Benedek has just turned six, and he considers the older ones to be his real brothers, they have such a good relationship. I didn't really want him to take up my sport, but about two years ago he asked me when he could start... I couldn't say he couldn't, so he started, but he also swims. We had him tested to see if he had inherited my illness, but luckily he was fine.

As you look back on your journey, how do you feel: how much support and help have you received from others in relation to your illness, and how many obstacles have you encountered?

I am very grateful to everyone who encouraged me and supported me! And if someone wanted to put obstacles in my way, that didn't bother me, I wouldn’t let them.

I think that the majority of people don't necessarily say or think something out of malice, but rather out of lack of information. They don't know what to think, which can lead to them saying or doing something offensive at first sight. But I know what I am capable of. I am unlikely to drive a spaceship or a plane, that is something that is not in my life. Well, driving a car, too, but other than that, I'll do anything. From my son Benedek's point of view, we are a family where it's always mum who drives because dad can't see properly. For him and us, that's how life is.