Childhood
My health is what finally pushed me to start writing. Not ambition, not money, but a quiet need to leave something behind — a small legacy.
Since the COVID pandemic, my body has not been the same. I have had pneumonia twice: once before the epidemic and once during its later period. Apparently I never fully recovered. My breathing changed. Some days my airway tightens without warning, and even something as simple as breathing becomes an effort.
For years doctors searched for the cause in my lungs. Recently, however, my doctor discovered something unusual in my blood that could point to a heart problem. Now I am entering a new round of examinations, starting with cardiology.
Moments like this make a person reflect. They make you ask what you have truly achieved in life.
When I look back, I see mostly ordinary things. Work, survival, moving forward one step at a time. But deep inside I feel that my life was never entirely ordinary. I have lived through times and places that shaped me in ways I did not understand while they were happening.
I grew up during communism in Eastern Europe. Later I found myself behind a bar in Berlin around the time the Wall fell — a moment when history was shifting beneath everyone’s feet. Years later I would eventually find a quieter kind of peace in the Netherlands.
Along the way I met many people. Some unknown, some famous. Each encounter left a trace. Each story shaped me, little by little, into the person I am today.
And so I began to write.
To remember where it all started.
I was born in a small place in Hungary, a village so small that most people would never recognize its name. At the time it felt like the whole world to me — dusty streets, quiet houses, and fields stretching farther than my childhood imagination could travel.
Life there was simple, at least on the surface. But it was also a place shaped by the quiet rules of communism, where people learned early not to ask too many questions and not to dream too loudly.
As a child, I didn’t fully understand the system around me. I only felt that the world outside our village must be bigger, more colorful, and full of possibilities that I could not yet see.
Years later I would leave that small place behind. My path would take me to Budapest, then to Berlin during one of the most historic moments of the twentieth century, and eventually to the Netherlands, where I would find a kind of peace I had never known before.
But none of that had happened yet.
At that time, I was just a boy in a small Hungarian village, watching the world quietly and wondering what waited beyond the horizon.
Befor I leave
The communist economy wasn’t working, so they introduced a form of private sector—leasing out hospitality businesses.
I managed to secure a very exclusive cocktail bar. It wasn’t easy, especially given the political climate, but I’ve always been a fighter. I kept going until I was finally able to run the business successfully.
A big advantage came from my early experiences in theatre—they helped me connect with people and build a strong, vibrant clientele.
Members of famous pop groups and even successful Olympic team of water polo players became regular visitors at the bar.
I had two business partners: one silent partner, and another who shared equal responsibility with me. Everything was going well… until the hurricane came.
It destroyed everything.
It was the worst day of my life. Completely unexpected—there had never been a hurricane like that before in Hungary.
I managed to save most of the money, but everything else was devastated.
Still, I didn’t give up.
I organized the restoration and rebuilt the bar—this time even more beautiful and exclusive than before. But it became too much. My partners wanted to give up.
I didn’t. I don’t know that word.
Without telling me, they took a bank loan—and disappeared.
Suddenly, I was alone with a newly rebuilt, but already broken, business.
Then two women approached me. They were interested in running the place and were willing to buy me out. I couldn’t leave completely, since the contract was in my name, but they could operate it as employees.
I decided to take a short break—Vienna, Munich, then back to Vienna.
On my way home, I discovered that the womens had reported me, hoping to take over the contract (after all I'm happy they did it, that's the reason why I get an amazing life). But under the communist system, things didn’t work that way—and they lost the cocktail bar.
It was never my plan to leave my country. I only needed a break… but that break turned into a lifelong journey.
I couldn’t go back home anymore, and so, my new life began in Austria. I lost everything, but strangely, that was the moment my life truly began.
The furniture, the walls—nothing was spared. I ran, trying to save whatever I could, but it was too late. The storm was relentless, followed by heavy rain. The bar was flooded up to one and a half meters. The safe had somehow opened, and above the water, the money of the business was floating, drifting like something unreal.
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