Sziasztok, Jánó vagyok. Közép-Európa első világraszóló podcast csatornáját hallgatjátok Magyarországról. Ez a Budapest.fm. Hi, my name is Ray, and you're listening to the number one podcast station in Central Europe, Budapest.fm, podcasting to the world from Hungary. Elfelejtettem, elfelejtettem. Sziasztok mindenkinek. Itt vagyunk Tara Kozen and Fernanda Silva from Brazil, you are, and you are from where? From New Mexico. New Mexico. My aunt used to live in Santa Fe. Really? Beautiful New Mexico. Only been once, but really gorgeous. And I went skiing there also at the Santa Fe, I think it's like the Santa Fe Mountain, and they also have Taos, is that in...? Yeah, yeah, Taos, a long time ago. There's no skiing in Brazil, is there? Well, no skiing in Brazil. Which part of Brazil are you from? I'm from the south. I was born in Londrina, north of Paraná state. Paraná. But I grew up in Foz do Iguaçu, it's the border with Paraguay and Argentina, and that's where the waterfalls are. Yeah, yeah, Iguazu Falls, amazing. I've never been, but I've heard fantastic things. Is it that, like, jaw-dropping, breathtaking when you actually get there to see it in person? Yeah, actually, when you are on the road approaching with the bus, because when I was there when I was smaller, we could reach by car. So when we were going the road approaching, you can feel a bit already the water and the sound from very far. So you have goose pimples in all your body, so it's undescribable. I try, but you should get there. That sounds amazing. I've been to Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre. Yeah, the gauchos. The gauchos, yeah. We had some nice steak and barbecue one Sunday. I think I ate some weird stuff like chicken hearts. Yeah, chicken hearts is very nice. They made this whole pot roast thing for me, and I thought it was just normal meat, and then my friend, who was Brazilian, he went to my high school, and they invited us down there, and then he started giggling, and I was like, Why are you giggling? And he said, Look at it closer, and it was just giant tongues from the cows, and it was actually delicious. It was really delicious. What about New Mexico? How did you get there? Your family's from there, or...? My mother's from there. My dad's from Iran. Oh, cool. Where they also like to eat cow tongue. It's like the most tender kind of meat. And they make this big soup called kale pache. In Iran. In Iran. Yeah, and they have it for breakfast, and it's all of the stuff in the head and the hoof. Oh wow. And it's like a calorie bomb. Is he from Tehran? Yeah, he grew up in Tehran, but I think he was born in Kashan. You go there often too? I've never been there. Never been? Yeah. My family, they left during the revolution in '79, so they're Baha'is, and it got very bad for Baha'is. What's a Baha'i? It's a religion that started in the mid-1800s, and it's the largest minority in Iran after the kinds of Islam. And so, yeah, it got very bad for them at that time, and then they moved to Ecuador. To Ecuador? Yeah, but I don't know if they eat cow tongue. Well, actually, I have one Ecuadorian friend. There's actually an Ecuadorian, a statue to an Ecuadorian traveler, poet, philosopher of some sort in the Városmajor, in District 2. And I don't know why. I think it's like an 18th-century guy that came to Budapest and I guess made an impact. He was an expat. I guess we're all expats. Yeah. We have a Brazilian, an Iranian, an American. Why did you guys come to Budapest or to Hungary in the first place, starting with— Short, short, short. In Brazil, I was having my vacation and I met with a very nice Hungarian guy. Oh. And we had a very nice love story. And young people are very brave for many things, so we were very brave to have a child together. Oh, great. But we couldn't get along together because he came back to Hungary and I wished to have the baby in Brazil, so my decision was to stay there. So we kind of broke up, but not in a bad... Statements, let's say. We were fine with each other, just we didn't want to continue the relationship. But later on I thought that it's nicer for my child to have mom and dad because of his work, he could not move to Brazil. And I thought that I can give Brazilian culture to this child from home, but to give Hungarian culture from Brazil it will be difficult. I know myself, I know he will speak Portuguese, probably English, and Hungarian, how can I teach him from here? So let's give a try. And so our decision as parents that, yeah, the best would be if I would come and I could make my life here in Hungary. So I came to share the parenting. That's amazing. I came to Hungary. How old is your son? Now he's 17. He will be 18 in November, this November. Oh, boldog születésnapot. That's amazing. Does he have a Hungarian name or a Portuguese name? He has a name that is not Portuguese, is not Hungarian. It's Frank. Frank. Yeah. But in Hungarian would be Ferenc. Ferenc. And in Portuguese would be Francisco, but I think he doesn't like any version, so Frank is the nicer. We're here in Ferencváros right now, Frankie town, so that's cool. And why did you come to Budapest anyway? A similar story. I was working with a Hungarian theater company called Stereo Akt, and they came to an international theater festival in Albuquerque, and I got involved in a workshop that they were doing, and then we did a show together, which was this kind of beautiful bus-based theater piece where the audience sits on a bus and all the theater happens on the street outside, and then the bus kind of goes through the city and all the actors have chase cars, and it was very, very beautiful, very imagistic and poetic. And I was really impressed with the way that they worked with professionals and amateurs together. I was curious about the art scene in Budapest, and then later they invited me to come to Budapest, and I came here and I was like, ah, the level of work and the rigor of work is much higher than what I was seeing in the States, and I felt like there was, which of course is a giant, I don't know, a kind of... When was this, by the way? This was two and a half— no, three years ago. Three years ago. Yeah. So I wanted to be part of what was happening here. It must have been an interesting time to come. Like, right, I guess that was right before or right after COVID started. Yeah, right before. Right before. Wow. And then I came and I also kind of came for love. Because I then fell in love with a Hungarian person. Oh, nice. Yeah. It was your destiny. It was your destiny. And then I had a lot of reasons to be in Budapest, and those reasons persist. Yeah, I as well met a Hungarian girl, not a guy, but also fell in love. And now here I stayed since 2018. Hard to believe it's been four years now. We actually met, I don't know if you know this place, it closed down I think before you got here, but the Corvin Tattoo. Oh, Corvin Tattoo was a place that I used to go with my child when he was very small. It was a place that we could sit in an open place because in Brazil it's very common that you go to pubs, open place with a child. If the parents are there, it doesn't matter. The kids can come in. So Corvin Tattoo was a place that I spent a lot of summers in the roof. Oh, nice. Yeah. It's also, I guess you didn't go with him when it was like a late-night rave there or something, but he went as well. Yeah. Well, now it's closed, unfortunately, because that was a cool place. But I think they're remodeling that whole Blaha. Yeah, I hope they will make something cool because, yeah, it's really nostalgic for me, that area I spent a lot of time. Have you ever been to—there's a pho restaurant, a Vietnamese pho restaurant that's right next to the Blaha tér mall, the Corvin Mall, and it's amazing. It's like a little hole in the wall, but if you like Vietnamese food, really, really good. Lam Anh Pho. It's my favorite. I was addicted because we lived right down the street in Dohány utca near the New York Kávéház, and then that was just like a five-minute walk, and it was 2,000 forints for a bowl of pho, and so I would go every day at lunch. That's amazing in Budapest because there are so many nice places to frequent. Yeah. Every district you go there is a nice restaurant, a nice coffee shop, and I'm a little addicted of treating myself with a slice of cake or a nice coffee, and yeah, Budapest is full with stuff to spend your money. Where have you lived in Budapest, both of you? Which parts of the city? Where have you lived, huh? I lived first with my partner's mother in the kind of attic apartment above her place. I was in the second district. Oh, wow. Kind of up some stairs. The Rózsadomb. Yeah. Nice. And that's where he grew up. And now we live in the eighth district, close to Corvin. Nice. Yeah, yeah. What about you? When I got in Hungary, I lived first in Óbuda. So the 3rd district in Zsigmond tér, a small house in the backyard of a little building. And after that, I moved to the 13th district. I lived in Visegrádi Street, that I love, that area, for a few years in two different flats. Then I moved to the 6th district, Andrássy, and now I'm living in the 14th district, near the old Örökert, which is also closed now. They're really gutting the atmosphere and the nightlife out of Budapest. And that green as well beside the park, it's really nice. But yeah, I love this area, the 6th, 13th district. Don't they have like a hot air balloon going up above the park now? Yes. It's very like, yeah, get in and you can have a view of the city from... So I've been reading a lot. I'm trying to write actually some stories about the 1896 Millennium Exhibition, which was the thousand-year celebration of Hungarian history, basically since when they came into the Carpathian Basin. And it was sort of this late 19th century World's Fair. I don't know if you guys know that book, it's called Devil in the White City. It's about the Chicago World's Fair, and there's a bunch of World's Fairs that were going on from 1851 in London, and then the Paris Universal Expositions, whatever they called them. And it was these big gathering points. And so they had one in Budapest that was just about, like, Hungarian history and culture, basically, for the thousand-year celebration. And that was also when all the minority groups were here, like the Croatians and the Serbs and the Slovaks and the Romanians. So it was a little bit of like a pride before the fall situation, because they were trying to assert their Hungarian dominance over the region. And then, of course, World War One happened not so long after that. Does your son like the Hungarian school system? Not really. No. Not really. I think also, not only based in his opinion, but I see it, there are lots of possibilities. It's very, very rich, in a certain way that... It's different from Brazil, but I see that everywhere still they have the old-fashioned style, that the kids are very tired, so the system going on, it's based in that. There are few schools that are trying to make it different, but not all of them are public schools. So what he pissed him off still that there's many, many contents that you won't really use it in life. It's good to have knowledge, but it's better to focus your knowledge for what will bring happiness, and also things that I still think that kids should learn in school: how to deal with your taxes. We should have learned that by already working with your university, trying to write your thesis. It's a lot of stuff that we should learn in school, how to be a normal citizen. Yeah, I agree. There's a real lack of civic knowledge and financial literacy with—I mean, that's a problem in America also. It's not just in Hungary. I think it's a global problem. Useless knowledge. Useless knowledge. Yeah, I happen to love useless knowledge, but it would be nice sometimes, especially in these times of crisis, if they taught us a little bit more, like survival skills. And how do you know my uncle, by the way? I know your uncle because I worked on a film with him that actually recently just wrapped in New York. It's a children's film by Godfrey Reggio, who's a... Kevin, like, six-foot-nine monk from New Mexico. He lived in New Mexico for a while, right? Yeah, yeah. That's where we met, actually. I met Godfrey. Oh, cool. Godfrey, and he came to some theater that I was a part of, and we became very quick friends. And, yeah. The way that my uncle describes Godfrey makes him sound like the most interesting person in the world. Like, he sounds like a very strange, mercurial, like, talented genius that is, like, constantly scribbling in his notebook and doing all sorts of wild visual... Didn't he take, like, a 14-year vow of silence or something? He was, I think he was, he was in silence while he was a monk, and that was, I think, from age 12 to 22 or 24. Wow, that's crazy. I can't be silent for, like, 14 minutes, let alone 14 years. And it really, yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah. And Mike Tyson's in that movie, right? And my friend Mike Tyson also became very quick friends. Were you there the day that he was on set? Yeah, and I became—it was a really interesting environment making this film because it was, like, very, very collaborative. We filmed everything in a big room next to where the office is, which created this environment of, like, extreme collaboration. And so the day that Mike Tyson was there, we had a very easy communication, and I'm not generally intimidated by fame, and so I just, I don't know, we had, like, a nice friendship, and then I ended up being the person that was kind of directing him that day. Wow, what an experience. It was very—yeah, and there was enough trust and, like, loveliness in the team that, like, that actually your uncle was just like, Ah, like, you're working really well with him. Like, you stand behind the camera. And so there was a lot of that in this process, which is really uncommon for film. That's awesome. Yeah, I've been in a few of my uncle's films, but they were all shot between the ages of, like, two and seven. He made, like— Like some incredible family movies that we still have today that are really, really, really, I think masterpieces in a way. I mean, it's really—he's a really cool guy, Uncle John. He is an awesome dude. And what's the name of the movie again? Once Within a Time. Once Within a Time. Do you know when it's coming out? I'm not sure. I'm not sure exactly. Yeah. And Godfrey, he was like the director of the—the, I'm going to butcher this name, but the Komaratsky whatever. Yeah. Kiyanas Katsi. Kiyanas Katsi, which at the time was like a groundbreaking, like visual artistic view of, like, societal organization and like a real, like, bird's-eye time-lapse, like crazy psychedelic experience, no? Totally, yeah. And there's three of them, and I think they're around ten years apart, and that's how my uncle got connected on the third one. And now my uncle seems like he's like—what's this word again? Amuensis. Like it's like when you're, like, an older artistic person's, like, person that you channel their vision, like old, like, pianists and stuff used to have to have, when their hands got arthritic, they would have to have, like, the amuensis, like actually do the art for them. So that's really cool. And so have you spent much time in Brooklyn? Yeah, I was there—I mean, a bit. I was there last year in March for about a month, and then again, I think in November for another month. In June for another month, and then for three months at the end of last year. Cool. What about you? In America ever? Have you ever been? No, never been. Never? Never been. Shoha. Shoha. Shoha no boy. Wow. Never been there. But it's funny that you guys talking about movies, because sometimes I work with some productions as well, but we never spoke about it, I think. Oh, really? And I never thought that you are related to that too. So it's something that Hungary brings people together because of that too. There are a lot of productions ongoing, so I'm more related to it through my uncle, although I do spend enough time filming myself that I guess I am sort of like in the film industry as well, just in the selfie film industry. How are you connected to it? Americans in this way. Yeah, it's kind of, it's something that I wish to do because my son also, he really wants to see once, or maybe live in there. I don't know, spend some time, you know. Yeah, there's a lot of Brazilians in America also. Yeah, especially in New York. I played soccer my whole life, so there was always tons of Brazilians. I have schoolmates living there, so yeah. Brazilians really like the American dream. Brazilians are really cool. I love Brazilians. My favorite soccer team is Liverpool, and they have a few Brazilian guys on there: Fabinho, Firmino, Alisson, and they're always like— My favorite players, because they just, they play with a lot of style and grace also, and they're also excellent players. So it's, like, really more fun than sometimes when you watch the other countries. Like, Germany is always great, but they play just like machines. Or England is always, like, killing people. But the Brazilians, they're playing like they're on the beach. Ah, they were having fun. Yeah, we do something special with our free time. It's like, life is enough hard, so let's have some fun. Nice. And how did you guys meet, anyway? Because of the campaign. Which campaign? Well, because of the war that started in Ukraine, I tried to put some donations in the car to make it full and go with my boyfriend to the border to take some supplies. Which border were you going to go to? We were thinking of going to Záhony because actually the Carpathian area, this region was in need first, what I read, and from that point I made some posts on Instagram, some stories, and many, many people started to want to donate. So to collect everything and then take somewhere, I need help. So I recruit some friends and then start to grow and grow and friends of friends. And, you know, Brazilians are like, they know everybody from everywhere. So the guys from Chemelwise University brought some people. The guys working in multinational companies, they brought their colleagues, and so on. And then Tara just came and I just got knowing lots of people in the Brazilian community that I didn't know yet, and also out of the Brazilian community. And then it was funny because the people who gathered in my place, they were really connected with things that I'm also related, for example, arts. Female voice: And so it was a very nice meeting for me to have Tara in the campaign. She was a very, and still a very helpful hand. Male voice: How did you find out about it? Female voice: Facebook, the great forum of Budapest. And I think I was just looking for organizations or groups of people that were working primarily in English, because I speak some Hungarian, but I'm still not very, very confident. And in group settings, of course, it's more challenging to follow the conversation. And so I found you through that. And really, I wanted to talk about those photos. I saw this photo of you guys, and she just took a picture of everybody that was there together, sorting the donations. And I saw this group of people, and it was obviously very diverse and from a lot of different places. And I was like, Oh, this looks amazing. I want to be part of this community. And so I think I just saw their faces and wanted to come. It made me realize it's so important to capture images of what you're doing, and not for, I don't know, self-promotion, but just to communicate the community. And you were doing that in a really beautiful way. Male voice: We just wanted to have some voice, like, yeah, we have things. I have a space. I opened my flat for that. We started like a headquarters, and when I saw that things are growing and we need more people, how to announce it. So social media is really working, Hungary. And we decided to have a little office and share the tasks. So we have a group of coordinators. We have assistance for administration. Male voice: Right, right, right. So what's the organization's name, by the way? Female voice: HUR is Help Ukrainian Refugees Hungary. HUR. HUR Hungary. Male voice: And you're now like an official organization, or how does that work? Female voice: That's the thing, because we started as a campaign, but... Most of the Brazilians who gathered in my place and start to get closer to the coordination. We saw that, yeah, everybody did some volunteer work somewhere in Brazil, work with some charity. So we thought that we cannot just—finally we met, and we see that we can work together. So our target is to become an association. We are working on that because this is just a campaign, and we are very happy if this will end soon. We don't want to aid refugees from war for so long. We want to end with this story. So once it finishes, we have a lot of places to help in Hungary: the Roma community, for example, orphanages, and places where we can find people in need. So we really want to continue this work. That's why we are organizing our center, humanitarian center. So that's great. And even if the war ends soon, I mean, that seems like a pipe dream, to be honest with you. It seems like it's just going to be a more protracted and longer drawn-out conflict from a realistic perspective, to be honest. But even if it does end, some miracle, it just, you know, stops, there's still going to be tons of problems with helping out, even, I think, small things like a lot of the kids that are coming and now living in Hungary and they don't speak the language and they need minorities that are—I know that we helped out with... This family down, I forget the name of the town, but it was somewhere in a ranch, and it was this Belgian guy. I call him Belgian Steve. And he texted me, and we had a similar experience where we rented a car, put some posts out, and then all of a sudden I had like $30,000 to spend. So we went out down to somewhere down south to this Belgian Steve guy's house, and they had a whole family of Carpathian Roma, plus one guy who was the husband of the wife who was going to give birth in like four days. There was like ten children running around, all these people, and he was a Ukrainian, Hungarian, with maybe a little bit of Roma heritage, but either way was with this Roma woman about to have a newborn. And now Belgian Steve has them on his ranch, and there's like 30 of them living there. I mean, maybe not 30, 20 or so. And so they just like stockpiled all this food for the winter, but obviously, you know, that's just a temporary Band-Aid, and if the family is going to live there, even if the war is going on or not, they're still going to need continued assistance. So, yeah, just we don't need that kind of demand anymore with donations. We have to run to the stations and aid people through the night, go to Záhony, to the borders, make these kind of actions. But we still are on to aid maybe a less amount of people, but more direct assistance, to find shelter still, maybe find a group to make some sports on the weekends for youngs that are staying for months or so. Little actions, but something to help. H-U-R. Hungary. I think this is another crucial thing for now, that we can help sort of help people find each other and help create community within the Ukrainians that are now in Budapest and in other parts of Hungary. And this is also one of my interests, because I'm a musician, and after working with you, I realized, like, well, what can an artist do in this situation? Like, actually, I don't have— I don't know. The resources to meet the humanitarian crisis. But now we're at the point where classes and, like, events where people can gather is really helpful. So now we're—I started to work with Magyar Zeneháza to create some events for kids. And there's also—they've opened lots of concerts for Ukrainian refugees. And so you just have to sign up for a form about which concert you want to go to, and you can go for free. And I can also give you the links for these. Yeah, that'll be awesome. I'll post them on the description of this episode. If you're watching out there, you'll see all the information on the replay and in the description. But what type of musician are you? I'm a classical singer, but I've moved away from traditional— What is a classical singer? Oh, kind of like an opera singer. I'm an opera singer. Oh, wow. But I moved away from opera and traditional art song, and do mostly experimental singing and improvisation. I saw you had a concert the other day at the Aurora, right? Yeah, yeah. How did that go? It was great. You were there also? I was not, but yeah, I'm just following her work, and for me it was amazing that she came to the campaign and she came with this project, this musical project for Ukrainian kids. And we can also—we can collect some instruments, right? Yeah, yeah. We are collecting some instruments for the kids. So that concert at the Aurora in the eighth district was for Ukrainian kids? It was not. It was actually a separate, a separate project. I guess this is another— Doing a lot of projects. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I had this little platform from Jazzy, which is an improvised experimental music series in Budapest, and they choose a different curator for each month to curate three concerts, improvised concerts. And they're every Wednesday at Aurora. And so I worked with— A Ukrainian literature and gender studies scholar named Masha Semashnia, and she selected some poems for each event. And then we kind of based the improvisations on those poems. I've been getting into Ukrainian poetry, well, mostly just the history of Taras Shevchenko, because he's a very interesting figure to me. I mean, this Ukrainian poet that was basically born as a serf, and then he came to St. Petersburg, and his freedom was bought for him by Karl Bryullov, or whatever, how do you pronounce his name. And then he became a free poet and started to write a lot and paint a lot. He was a phenomenal painter, and he wrote specifically about the experience of the Ukrainians, and he wrote in the Ukrainian language. And then he had this poem called Kobzar, or this book of poems called Kobzar. And the Kobzar is like that Ukrainian guy that walks around with this sort of, like, authentic folk guitar and goes and recites his poetry. And this book, Kobzar, like, brought the Ukrainian language onto the European stage. And so his career went further and further. And then he wrote a really sort of defamatory satire about Tsar Nicholas, and more importantly, Tsar Nicholas's wife, who had some facial tics. And so Tsar Nicholas exiled him out to, like, the Caspian Sea, and he lived the next ten years as an exile. But he became this sort of torch for freedom and liberty and the Ukrainian people. And then Tsar Nicholas's son, Tsar Alexander II, he freed the serfs, and so that was seen as, like, a big motivation, was this, like, poetry that Shevchenko wrote. But I think that the Ukrainian story is also a very captivating, like, literary and romantic story, because it's really this—people are so amazed that Russia came in and, you know, is doing all this violence against them. But they've been doing it for centuries. It's not, like, a new thing whatsoever. Yeah. Whatever project, I think that is also supporting keeping Ukrainian culture. Alive for the people who cannot keep it in their countries, they are not even there. So promoting this kind of things, I think it's very nice. It's very special. It's very important. It's not only beautiful, because it would be beautiful if we do it in another circumstance. Yeah, right, right, right. But it's very necessary, and I'm very happy that Tara just joined our campaign, and she's developing some other nice projects. Do you see the kids really responding to the musical classes? Is that something that has been very— Yeah, it's really beautiful. And I mean, and mostly what I'm trying to do, and what I also learned from you and some people from UNHCR, which I always forget exactly what the— United Nations Human Rights Council. Yes, thank you, is that the best is to find people from within the community and support what they're already doing. And so you're not imposing a program onto a community, but instead sort of just supporting what's already going on.
But yeah, there's especially a lot of Roma people from Ukraine have come here and are coming from poverty and are really, really hungry for programs. And they speak Hungarian. And so it's also quite easy to bring, like, a Hungarian music teacher into that environment to, yeah, to bring programs. And they're so happy and they're so sweet. And so, yeah, I'll also give you another link of people, Hungarian music teachers who would like to sign up. We're gonna have a lot of links. Scroll down, scroll down. That's great. And what are the big things that you're focused on, like let's say in the next couple weeks with your organization? Well, we are together now being supported by United Nations, so we are promoting training. So we had the first two weeks ago. Because of my personal things, like moving from my flat, as I told you previously, we couldn't manage to make in the following weekend. So we are planning to have it continuously every week, a different training together with UNHCR. And so from that point, we are also planning in a different way how we work, because previously we had to go to Záhony to help a lot, because when I was there first time, the mayor just asked me, like, We don't need donations, we don't need any items, we need workforce. So if you can bring people, and that's what we did. We took translators, we took many different people with different tasks to help around the stations. But now the demand is not that high anymore. So we have to figure out how, because still we have kind of a hundred volunteers. We had already about 150. But now we have around 100 people still with us, and we are trying to find the shelters in Hungary, in Budapest, that we can serve better, because also to cover the cost of the trip. So we work with donations still, but we try to make it more, as the aid is being more personal now. So, for example, we had one volunteer that she couldn't work in the very beginning with the donations, serving in the shelters or in the stations. But now that she opened the volunteering for music therapy, so the Brazilian girl, she's a music therapist, and she's joined in this project now. So our aim is to direct the people with certain tasks, with certain skills, for the proper tasks. So if we have professional people that we can send for volunteering in these kind of centers, or if we can help some shelter to clean, to go in a night shift. So we also wait that some people who are listening to us this afternoon, if they really want to connect with us, we have people, we can collect donations still. So where do the people come to find you? Do you have a website? Do you have a Facebook page? We have a Facebook page and we have Instagram, and you can find under this name, HUR. Yeah, and so you can find all the information there, monetary donation and items donation. At the moment, we are not collecting because we don't have a headquarters at the moment. Right, right, right. So, but still we have a lot to do regarding training, because also this situation won't end anytime soon, and there's a special way to deal with refugees from war, and we have to be extremely careful. That's why United Nations together with us, because we want to learn and grow also in our way to aid people. Yeah, of course. That sounds awesome. Well, congratulations. Gratulalok. Has there been any particularly, like, specific uplifting experience that you have in mind with, like, an individual that you worked with or something that really touched your heart, like brought you to tears? Well, either of you, by the way. Go ahead. Well, you mean right now with this situation or in life in general? Either way, whichever way you want to take it, because have you ever cried? My background, actually, I grew up in a religious environment, and I went to missionary school. So it was also, I had a lot of training on that, and I faced many, many different situations. But I think what I'm facing here, it's 2022, and there are some situations that shouldn't exist. So, for example, there was a lady in Záhony. She arrived. She had all the papers, Ukrainian papers for the kids. She was Hungarian, but she was also Ukrainian, and she was from Roma community. And she was struggling to show the people that she didn't want any problem there. She needed help. She arrived. She was trying to translate from Ukrainian language. She had four kids, like stairs, and one in her belly, and she looked like 22 years old. And that was very difficult for me to see how young, and she gave what she had. The kids could say poems in Hungarian and sing songs, but they were completely dirty, and the poorness has a smell. All around the world is the same, whereas poverty, there is smell of poverty. And that when they have to, in their own language, make a performance for people to, you know, give a juice for them, give this baby trolley for them. And after you take the child to the doctor room, and you see that because you are holding the hand of the child, she was so scared, the little girl. But if you are there and we are talking to her and touching her, that was for her, she could calm down. And when we took them to the train after the all night, the kids were so high on sugar, and the parents were extremely tired. And we see that, yeah, we should be there. We should be there to just be there for them. Like, you want to go to the toilet, no one will steal your child or cause any harm. And that's why training is so important for us. And when we took this family to the train, and some people there, they were kind of retaining things, and I had to stand like, I brought this baby stroller, so I'm gonna take it to her, because she couldn't even hold the kids. She was asking, Can I take it? Because just to pull the small one, the small one started to cry because she saw that we got in the train, we took their stuff in, but we are not going with them. And that crushed my heart as a mother to see that the kids after the trauma, they are very nice to us, but when they have to take another train and go, you see the panic. They don't want to face that thing anymore. So now I can talk about it like this, but it was— There is a big dichotomy in these Ukrainian children in that they've aged so rapidly, I think, through this experience. And probably also, you know, living in Ukraine in general, they've been in a sort of wartime situation since 2014, in a sense, where it's been present in their country, which has not been the case for most of us growing up in the West. But these kids are so, like, old in some ways, and then you see immediately, like two seconds later, they're still kids, and you get some reminder. I was playing, you know that card game Uno? Yeah. With like a group of Ukrainian kids down at the, what's it, the Hotel Danubius, Hotel Hungaria Danubius, and there's a Jewish organization there. My friend Lisa, who was on the podcast last week, some of you might remember, she was playing the guitar. And they had this group of Ukrainian kids, and there was probably like six-year-olds, seven-year-olds, eight-year-olds, a three-year-old, and literally me with like six of them, and they were just dictating the card game. Like the three-year-old had his cards in his hand like this, like he could have been smoking a cigar or something. And like the way that they're talking in English, and they're just like so, like, little adults. And I know that's always the case for kids, but these kids, it was crazy. But then two seconds later, they're like running around the room throwing balls at each other. So you get, like, the immediate, like— Shot back to life, like, wow, these are real, these are kids, and they're going through what we were going through as seven and eight and nine and older and younger year olds, but just in a hyper-exaggerated experience that is probably a huge shock to the system, I can only imagine. Yeah, these things should shock us in a way that, let's do something. Let's— Are you optimistic about the future or pessimistic? Just about the world in general, not necessarily, or yourself, but— I'm, wow, what a question. I'm generally an optimist, but I'm not an idealist optimist. I think that, yeah, there are giant problems in the world that won't go away or that will only go away partially. I think that there will be more suffering and more pain and more war, but I'm also deeply moved by the human spirit. And honestly, like, in the past few months in Hungary, to see that there are so many people who have come together to fill the void of aid for this crisis is really deeply moving. Definitely. And I'm not someone that at any point, like in the past month has thought about fleeing Hungary, because I know that that's also part of the narrative that, like, oh, people are going to leave because of political situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm not that way. I feel very, still very much in love with Budapest, and I want to stay here. And especially after this experience of seeing how generous people are when there's a clear vision, like a collective vision. So, yeah, I'm both. Like, I think that I'm a person that believes that people are good and that people will persevere in the face of injustice. And, yeah, and I think that there's a strong... Yeah, community here of people that are trying to— Definitely. Yeah. No, that's, I feel very similar. It is quite draining, I think, to go through a global experience like this and just see. But then it also sort of peels the Band-Aid off and makes you realize that this has been going on in so many places around the world in very similar extents, like in Yemen, in other places, other conflict zones that we much more easily, I think, take for granted. And some people want to point the finger at racism. Some people want to point the finger at, like, the Western allies and, you know, we're in cahoots with Saudi Arabia or whatever. But it's also just the fact that a lot of these conflicts have been normalized. And in a way, we're seeing that happen with Ukraine as well, especially now that the war has been sort of shunted out to the eastern border, and maybe the refugee crisis, while still serious, is not as emergent as it was a month ago or so. And you can see people sort of start to get a little bit more comfortable with the situation. But I think it's very important that we don't, because especially in the European context, we've seen what happens when you accommodate an evil tyrant and let him get his way. But on the bright side, I think that the West response has been fairly stiff. I mean, it could always be stiffer, but it's been good to see that the Ukrainian cause is one that people have coalesced behind. Not so much in Hungary, but, you know, elsewhere. And then that's the other thing, is that in Hungary it really has, but more so from the people, as you were saying, rather than from the government. But, like, it's the same thing with artists, how you have to separate the art with the artist. And I think you have to do the same with the government and the people, because in no way does the Hungarian government necessarily represent everyone in Hungary, just as the Russian government doesn't represent everyone in Russia, so on and so forth. Yeah. What about Brazil? What's the situation? I know you guys have an election coming up pretty soon. Yeah, yeah, that's our hope, actually. I think everywhere in the world, people should get stronger and get it seriously, that voting is a tool that we have, and at the moment it's the only tool that we have to try to be part of who is ruling the state, because in theory that's how it should be, the folks. Who's the guy in Brazil, Bolsonaro, right? Oh, yeah. I say his name, I don't want. He's like Voldemort. Yeah, Voldemort. So this person who is now the leader of our nation, he's for many, many years—he didn't start now being this kind of person. So Brazilians made a big mistake when they vote for him, thinking that the left part was putting the country so down, but actually the opposite. So check the news, check the facts, check the numbers. So we really hope that Lula will be the president again. Lula—he's a Silva also, right? Lula da Silva. Yeah, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. We're all a big family. He's more like a left-wing socialist. No, he's really left, but, you know, I think all around the world, the left and the right, they are making some moves to try to find the middle term, what I think it's very nice in theory as well, but it doesn't really work, because there are many things under the carpet that even both sides—I don't mean that's a better side or one side that is... More correct. Corruption is everywhere. But I think, you know, sounds a bit cliche maybe, but I still go to the point that if people think that, oh, but this politician, he will steal from the people, he will be very corrupt and put a lot of money in his pocket. Okay. But if the folks are not losing the dignity, keep your pockets full with money, but you can't make your people lose dignity. And there were some people who could manage that, you know. People were eating properly. People were going to school. Brazilians could go and travel. When I arrived in Hungary, people were here for another reason. Then I could see my fellows coming to Hungary because of studies, because they got a job, and not a job that because they fall in love with someone and they come to live here, and from here something happened. So professional Brazilians coming here, students coming here, people looking after their master and PhD. So for other reasons, people were here. And also after the families moving, the students came and the families decided, let's go to Hungary. They had enough money to also spend summertime in Europe. And that's not the case now? No, it's not the case now. It's absolutely not the case now. It's totally different. Of course, the programs that were created in another government are still going on, but we are again, there are again kids fainting in school because they didn't eat. Yeah. And we hadn't that for a long time. It was like we had a better situation. And those are all the domestic issues. I mean, I think the big international one that everyone hates Bolsonaro for is what he's doing to the rainforests, is he's just gutting the thing and, like, slicing out the lungs of the planet, it seems like. Everything, everything with the... With the Brazilian oil, with the forest, but—and together, if you kill the forest, you are killing the animals, you are polluting the river. So there is no control, and also the violence against the indigenous people. We just had the case now that they raped a 12 years old till she died, and a whole community was killed. So where are the people who should protect our culture as well? And these people, it's not just about culture. There are lives there. And yeah, when we see the crisis here, but not because of war, we have to forget about all the other problems going around the world that didn't start today, or yesterday. No, I think if anything, for a lot of people, it's opened up their eyes to these problems. I mean, maybe that's a little bit optimistic. I don't know how many of the actual percentages, but for me at least, and I know for a lot of people, it's made us feel a little bit more socially responsible. I mean, I don't know how you guys felt during COVID, but it was a little bit of like a nihilistic experience in a sense, because you just—there wasn't really like a good guy or a bad guy. Not that you need that, but there was just so much chaos and confusion out there, and it was sort of this invisible thing. But with the war, for me, it's been a much more like visual alarm clock, I would say, in my own head. Yeah, but changing the subject, do you have a favorite place in Hungary to travel to that you've been? Ah, wow. Yeah, I mean, I love, I love Balaton. I went to Mátra the first month that I lived here, and that's very beautiful. We were talking about the greenery of Brazil and how sometimes it's like it's coming towards you, like it attacks you, this verdance. And that's how you felt in the Mátra? That's how I felt a little bit. And I'm from the desert. Like I'm used to, like, browns, lots of browns, and it's— Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like maybe into red, maybe in orange. And, like, that's what my eyes can perceive. And with green, it's like I feel like I'm not— like it's some mirage or something. And so I'm still very impressed by things like greenery and water. Yeah, Hungary is really nice with that. They have this sort of, like, hobbitshire-like country with a lot of these fairy-tale flowing rivers and streams. Yeah, flowers there. They can make so pretty gardens. In nature is beautiful, but I think the villages also, they are so pretty. There is some, yeah, Mátrafüred, like my boyfriend is from the region of Gyöngyös, and I think that area, it's very nice, Parád. There's some little places there with the little hills, excuse me. But I used to work in Etyek. There's also a very nice place with the wineries and the grapes, so very nice, beautiful nature. And the region of Veszprém, Tapolca, the nature is beautiful there, Pécs. We just got back from there, Baranya megye, which is where Pécs is, and we went to this little town, Zengővárkony. It's actually the second time we've been there. The woman, Sylvie, she found me. She knows that I do some YouTube videos about Hungary, and they invited us to go for their Lukács-nap celebration back in the fall, which is like this folk traditional celebration. They all dress up in costumes, march through this little town, and then get really drunk at night. I think that was the worst hangover I've had in the past. Have you been to Mohács? Mohács, yeah, I went to the busójárás. That was great also. Have you been? No, never. I've only seen pictures with these, like, giant masks. Yeah, that's wild. That's wild. You, like, scare away the bad spirits from the winter. I didn't scare away anyone, but the people with the masks—I mean, I didn't have the masks—are like, they're crazy. It's like these giant yetis with these devil, satanic masks, and they light up a bigger bonfire than you've ever seen. And you're standing only like ten feet away from it, so you feel the heat and everything. It's cool. It's cool. It's definitely like a little bit touristy. A lot of people are there, you know, just to take pictures and stuff. But once the fire starts, you forget. I mean, it doesn't matter if there's tourists there or anyone, really. It's just, you're in this inferno, and it's a real crazy environment. Parade in the street. Yeah, yeah. It reminds me of Brazilian party. Oh, I would love to go to a Brazilian party. Everybody's drinking, and goes the music, and some people listen to some kind of music, but the folkloric music—it's ongoing, and people are dancing. Nice. What about in the world? Do you have a favorite place that you've traveled to in the world? I was in Chile for my cousin's wedding in Ecuador, and my father and I took the opportunity to be in that part of the world at least and took the long journey to Santiago. And if I wasn't in Budapest, I think I would be in Santiago. Wow. And we also went to Valparaíso, which is this like—it's like a rainbow through Wup, and like beautiful, beautiful houses. Nice. It's an incredible place. So you speak Spanish also? No, I mean, I speak some. I studied Spanish in school. And because of the classical singing thing, I'm pretty good at pronouncing stuff. So I'm good at being very convincing for the first 30 seconds of a conversation, and then my naivety becomes very clear. I'm sure you're just being modest, but that's how I feel about Hungarian sometimes. Well, I don't know. You have to get very good at, like, carrying the conversation and acting like you understand, because for me, speaking, even if I'm not speaking correctly, you know, I can carry on a conversation with myself in Hungarian fine. But then someone thinks that you know more than you actually do, and then they start going into hyperspeed, and you just have to know, like, when to nod and when to say okay. But sometimes it gets you into trouble because you, like, start laughing and like, why is that funny? What about Hungarian food? You like Hungarian food? You're a cook. Yeah, I'm a cook. I love Hungarian food, actually. My favorite is the vörösboros marhapörkölt with goulashka and a good alma paprika filled with káposzta and very spicy, that one that you cry, so with a lot of taste. You can make this? Yes, I. All right. When can I come over? Well, we were talking about maybe have a beer, and maybe we have to talk about that. Okay, cool. Yeah, that sounds awesome. I'm very down to eat and drink. What about you? You like Hungarian food? Yeah, very much. I really like this rakott krumpli. That's my—it's like a five-ingredient meal. You can put it in the oven, and then it's done in 20 minutes, and that's my— Amazing. There's actually a really good Iranian or Persian restaurant that's, like, down the street from here. I forget what it's called. It's called the— goddammit, I used to eat there all the time. Anyway. There's one in Yasamari. Okay. And there's another one close to Kalati, I forget. But yeah, I've noticed recently there's some more. What is Iranian food, how would you, or Persian food, how would you describe it? It's rice, mostly, and, like, a thick stew that you put on the rice. And there's usually something like meat in it, like lamb or chicken, and, like, saffron and, yeah, what is it, cardamom plays central roles. How do you eat the vegetables? It's more like cooked or raw? Both, both. Often, like, in traditional Persian food, there's, like, a middle plate that has, like, basil and lots of green stuff on it and, like, raw onions and the whole thing. And then also in the stew, there's lots of vegetables, like thick green, beautiful bright vegetables. Lovely. So I'm getting hungry. Yeah, yeah, I know. Me too. Now my mouth is watering. Nice. Do you have a favorite Brazilian food? Oof, the favorite Brazilian food... chicken hearts. Chicken hearts. I mean, I love just the barbecue in general. Like, that was so nice. We had the churrasco on, like, the Sunday and the whole family came over. This was a while ago. Brazil was really my first real travel experience. I wouldn't even call it independent. Well, I went with a friend, but not with parents, basically, international travel. And this guy, Tomás, his family is from Porto Alegre, and they invited us down there for a week. And they did a churrasco on Sunday, and it was really nice. And, yeah, I loved the vibe in Brazil. It was a lot of good times. And then it was unusual for me being an 18-year-old, growing up in the suburbs, and now all of a sudden you're in Brazil and the drinking age is 18 and you can go out and party as much as you want. And there, like, the parties were starting at one in the morning. Like, I'd never seen anything like that before, you know, being from high school or whatever. Like, all of a sudden they're like, Oh no, we're still waiting to go out. We're going to go to the club or whatever. I'd never really even been to a club, and they didn't leave until one. And that was a big shock for me. Couldn't believe it. But Brazil was really cool, really, really cool. I would love to go back. I went to Porto Alegre in the winter, so it's like the least Brazilian environment that you could ever imagine. Do you have any bucket list places that you would like to go? I've never been to Iran, and I would like to go. That sounds like—what's going on in Iran now anyway? Like, how is the political situation there? You know, I'm really not updated on it, unfortunately. I'm not the right person to ask, and I won't pretend to know. You probably know more about it than I do. No, not really, actually. Iran, I don't—Iran, Iran, I don't—I mean, I think, I just know it in the sense that it's sanctioned a lot, and I think that's a little bit similar to the Russian situation now, is that their economy also struggles, but they have a very totalitarian religious regime in there. Yeah. And what about, going forward, like in the next month, what would you like to accomplish with HUR, Hungary and the Ukrainian effort? I'll say, I mean, for me, with this project with Magyar Zenéháza, I'd like to have a sort of mass of organized teachers, both Ukrainian teachers and Hungarian teachers, that are offering regular classes either at a centralized community place or in homes or community centers where people are living or going to regularly, programs for kids so that we can have sort of like a program that's in place, that's running, and where people can find each other. And yeah, and continue offering these concerts. And I'm starting to make friends with other creative Ukrainian people who are in Budapest and who want to lead. And so my hope is to find more of those and to put them in positions of, yeah, power so that they can organize their own events. That's great. That's, I think— Creativity and education are just huge, huge helps to anyone, whether they're coming from a crisis or not. But especially in these crisis situations, it might not be the first thing that people think of. But I think it really—it's like, teach a man to fish versus catching a fish type of thing. Like, you really give the skills and the tools to people to help overcome these difficult situations. So that's awesome. And we were talking about what to teach in school, like you mentioned taxes, and I think another big thing is, yeah, learning to work together and learning to problem solve. This is what we learn with creativity. What about you? Any goals over the next— Just a little bit. Oh, no, it's okay. I think if I told you too—well, as I told you, this was a campaign, but our aim is to become a humanitarian center of support. So we have already a name for it. The name is CABE, Centro de Apoio Humanitário Brasileiro na Europa. How do you spell that? C-A-B-E. C-A-H-B-E. C-A-H-B-E, CABE, Humanitarian Center of Support. So H-U-R, Hungary is going to turn into CABE? It won't turn in because it's like—I was thinking about it even yesterday—it's like a baby born, but in the wrong position. It didn't come from the head, you know? So maybe we can see a little leg from it, but we are pulling this baby and the whole body will come. So this is just one member of it. So H-U-R was a campaign of something that is bigger inside many hearts and many minds. And our humanitarian spirit, just when we got together, we could see how big we can— So we decided, yeah, if we can in a month, let's see if we are done with the association. Nice. Well, I have high hopes for both of you with this organization, and it's amazing what you guys are doing. And thank you so much for coming on and sharing this experience with HUR Hungary, soon to be also KB with the rest of the baby as it continues to come. And we look forward to seeing how we can help, and hopefully I myself can get involved with some of these activities because it sounds like a great time. Sounds great. So all this information for everyone out there watching will be in the link in the description, or the description with the links, whichever way you want to do it. And also, we've started, for one of our guests two weeks ago, this guy Alma. He's a Nigerian soccer player, and he's here trying to get a contract with a professional team. He had to flee Ukraine, and we started a GoFundMe. So I'll put the link to that in the description as well. You can check out how you can help Alma, how you can help HUR Hungary, and once again, thank you so much. We'll see you soon. Thank you. It was a pleasure. See you. See you.
