András | Károlyi garden

“I’m a journalist and I write books for children. I didn’t like Pest for a long time, I got lost easily. When my daughter was little, we lived in the countryside: we watered the lawn together in the garden, we swinged on the old pear tree and we told the drunk butterflies especially not to come as it isn’t acceptable to land on such a tiny shoulder without asking first. And otherwise, we already had enemies: the wild midges. The garden was full of secrets. There was a cave carved in the yellow soil, an enormous ladder which you could climb to get to the upper garden, where stray dogs, weasels or other fabulous creatures sometimes walked in. We moved from there, there weren’t colours, grass, swings, I sometimes feel more at home in faraway villages, where the locals are squatting in dug pits and watching the excise men to help the smugglers, or among the inhabitants of refugee camps, in the parliament, or next to the bell-ringer of the village, the almost hundred years old Aunt Veronika, while she is making her jam in a huge cauldron. I tried to find my place under the sweet smelling oil trees of the farmers’ world, where I travelled on the old coach of the last equestrian´s postal cart, or in the pálinka village where the first Hungarian lottery winner and his whole family were killed by drinking and great wealth. Then I found this garden. I like its green, its red, its blue, its silence, its noise. It may made Pest a bit smaller and a bit friendlier and I now get lost in it only if I want to. My daughter has grown since then. It happened that she came here with me. Here I am at home. Finally.˝