Tag #140821 - Interview #102520 (Laszlo Galla )

I had been going to Pest since I was a small boy. We had some distant relatives there but we didn’t go because of them only, but my father used to go to get goods. Sometimes my mother and father traveled together, but only if there was a way to leave the shop. I was usually only with my mother in Pest. We stayed at the Astoria Hotel, and I loved the elevator there, and I annoyed the elevator boys, because I was always going up and down in it. Opposite the Astoria was an open air cinema, the Markus Park Cinema, and one could see everything brilliantly from the upper floors of the hotel, if we managed to get a room on the fifth floor on that side. I also liked watching the trams. I loved Budapest in general by then, and I always wondered at the great traffic, and even today I don’t understand – in Szentes few people came and went on the street, everybody did their business wherever they were, and only went to the Post Office or shopping, if they really had to. There was no bustle, and I wondered why did so many people have to be on the street and go here and there, why didn’t they sit at home and do their job.