A summer of love...

Do you remember those summers? If you are expecting a juicy romance, look further. Instead, at the end of this blog, I will be offering you juicy videos of food, created by my wonderful son Dani Botos and his fiancée Karolina Zeleznicka. Two chefs bound by love, creating beautiful food, and one-minute videos of excellent quality. You can eat beauty, after all, and feast with the eyes.

Do you remember those summers? When you fell in love and fell out of it by the end, when leaves started to fall and you had to go back to school? Oh, the coolness of September, when we turn to our books and serious study, with the pressure of having to perform, yet excited by meeting new teachers and subjects. I was back in Budapest at the end of summer and found a photo of my first teacher, Judit Szekely, or Székely Judit néni, the Hungarian way. She was tough, but I loved her. She taught me literature, and under her guidance, I first had an inkling that I could become a writer. She was a single woman, a chain smoker, who often sat on the top of her desk, crossing her thin legs, blowing smoke into the air, looking away over our heads. Perhaps she was looking at me, now.

Whenever I go back to Budapest, I am confronted by the past. This time, it was even further back, before my birth. I decided to research the sequel for my novel, Kata. Visiting museum archives, looking at letters written by dead people, trying to figure out how they felt, what type of people they were, is a privilege. It is deeply humbling but also engages one in an intimate dialogue with a character, whom we are trying to recreate and make alive in the reader's mind.

After wavering between three ideas, I ended up here again, in an uncomfortable past - not as if the present would not be just as uncomfortable and scary - looking at Stalinism, brutality, and people having to escape to live a life - yet, this closer look reassures at the same time. Dictators will fall, this is what history teaches. While we thought history repeats itself in circles, it is more likely to move in waves in a spiral. I also realized that my life is too short, but I hope to live to see a new, upward wave again, instead of the present roller coaster.

Visiting the Iron Curtain Museum created by a former soldier was enlightening. He did include the recreation of Hungary's new Iron Curtain (on the right) now on the southern border with Serbia, there to keep out refugees. Very different from the wooden watchtowers and 6-meter-long minefield as it started in 1949, to keep in everyone, but just as effective.

A summer of love...

Well, love, live, eat, drink and be merry. https://www.instagram.com/blandwithoutyou/

Life is too short to waste and we have to be grateful for what we have now, here, wherever you are.