This picture was also taken on a holiday in Romhany when I was 'feeding' the geese.
We, the children used to go on holiday in the summer. Dad didn't, because he worked, and my mother worked, too, because when dad equipped the lab, he taught my mother and she worked with the chemical balance, but while we were small mom took us to my grandmother's in Miskolc. She didn't take us to the Balaton, because she said that that was the hotbed of poliomyelitis, we weren't allowed to go there. I learned to swim at the bathing establishment of the Electric Works in Miskolc. My brother also learned in Miskolc, but he learned on Varoshaz Square in a swimming-bath. He learned to swim so that there was a pole, there was a rope on it, and on the rope there was a strap, they put the child in it and shouted to him to swim. I didn't learn this way, because that was somewhat later, and that was a more modern world. They taught us so that the coach threw a lot of teaspoons into the water, and we had to bring them out, so he made us get used to swimming with open eyes, and then somehow we learned to swim. Later we went swimming many times. I think I was 8 years old, the Tungsram swimming-pool was brand new, and I got terrible sunstroke there, I was in fever, they even had to take me to the hospital.
When we were older we spent the summer in Romhany. Our maid was from Romhany, and my mother sent her with us to Romhany. Her father didn't live, but her mother did, and they had a house on the main street of Romhany. It was a farmhouse with big trashing-floor and stacks. They were farmers; she had several siblings, so it was a nice big family. We didn't go barefoot, our sole didn't endure it, but we wore sandals, though everyone else in the village went barefoot, except when they went to church on Sundays. But after a while we could also go barefoot on the stubble. It was strictly forbidden to play in the stacks, because it was dangerous, but we still ran up and down between the stacks. Our maid wore many skirts, everyone in the village wore skirts, they had a very nice national dress. On Sundays the girls, who had braids with a long ribbon at the end, walked along the street arm-in-arm, singing, and the boys walked behind them in boots and black trousers. When my mother was also there she wore national costume from there, and we did, too. I had a national costume Romhany, I also had an aigrette, and when I was a little girl at the end of the school year, on the 15th March we wore national costumes. We spent three or four summers in Romhany, but then the maid got married and we didn't go anymore. The maids always got married after working for us.
