As a young boy, I used to sit on the knee of my grandfather
(Nagy papa) and listened to his many stories about the “big
world” that was outside our little village of Nyögér, Hungary.
Grandfather never travelled further than about 100 km from the
village, had never seen a movie, but read a few books, including
the bible. He used to read the newspaper every day and sometimes
the fancy color magazines that had pictures in them about major
cities, especially Vienna. His vision of the big world was
developed from these pictures. He also had a highly creative
imagination about life outside our village. Even at an early age, I
was fascinated by his stories and told him that I wanted to go and
see the “big world”.
So, at age two and a half years, I packed some food in a
basket and started out on my journey to the big world. Our village
priest, who was an amateur photographer and always had his
camera with him, saw me as I was coming out of our house and
asked where I was going. When I told him, he thought the
occasion was perfect for him to take this picture that is on the
front cover of this book.
Sixteen years later I narrowly escaped execution for being a
freedom fighter. I then started my adventurous journey to the big
world as a refugee, living my grandfather’s dream!
I hope my adventures will be an inspiration to the refugees of
current times that every dark cloud has a silver lining.
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