My story started in the Soviet Union, in Leningrad (now once again called Saint Petersburg as it was in the past). My father had a Hungarian scholarship to Leningrad and met my Russian mother, a student from Alma-Ati in Kazakhstan, at the university there. They got married in 1957 and started a new life in Budapest where I was born.

I went to Moscow several times in my childhood and with my grandparents to Alma-Ati. I remember we were there for several weeks once and by the time we got home, i could hardly speak Hungarian. I am interested in the world of Russia and its people and though I consider myself Hungarian, when I step onto Russian soil, I do not feel that I am among strangers.