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assigned office was there, but they looked at me as if I had
gotten lost. And yes: someone else went out. I was handled
differently later in the seventies, with a child at home, and
finally I could have become a tour leader abroad too. I was not
sad about the fact that I could only work at home in the sixties. I
could earn more and I got familiar with a lot of smaller and
greater Hungarian places unknown to me beforehand, and fell in
love with Hungarian landscape. A student of mine, who became
an interpreter in Arabic countries, wrote me in a letter that he
would remain abroad. I answered, and while I was writing my
answer, I was travelling through the Great Hungarian Plain by
train, so I included a description about gold coloured corn
fields, about sunlit, green pastures with cattle grazing here and
there, and about why there is no place like home. He came
home eventually, but we never really talked of this anymore.
When I had some free time between two foreign tourist
groups to guide, I spent my time in Balatonkenese, at the lake; I
had fun and swam in Lake Balaton. The beach parties knew me
and counted on me, in spite that only seldom could I visit them.
Arriving at Kenese I was driving my car along the beautiful
alley of high poplars that led to the lakeside when I noticed a
girl cycling towards me from the opposite direction, in a
waddling manner, though I was not driving fast or dangerously.
Nevertheless, racing on the roads was common in those times
and people soon started to race “to see who is faster.” The
bottomless need to prove ourselves was not at all a Hungarian
custom though. There was plenty of space on the roads yet in
the sixties. I looked in the mirror and realized that I must take a
turn, but there were many trees. So, I turned the car towards the
field, drove straight to it, and turned around, even though there
was a high chance of getting stuck, nevertheless I could manage
to turn. But here came the rub, I did not know what on earth to
say. Not to mention that many girls did not like guys with cars,
thinking that they were conceited. Yeah, well, how will I get a
piece of success out of this? I caught up with her, because she

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