If you would like to be interviewed as a Surprising Expat, please write with a few details of what you do, to: Marion by clicking here.

Richard Robinson meets me in a café off Rákóczi tér, not far from his flat in Népszínház utca where he has lived for the last fifteen years. District VIII is home, and he makes a point of supporting both local shops and the market in the square.

On completing his B.A. in Music at Reading University in the UK Richard was unenthusiastic at the prospect of school-teaching, and thus opted to teach English abroad.

“I was in Rome,” he begins, “I’d spent two years there and I was looking for another job. I was working for International House – it's a network that can transfer you to schools in different countries. They offered me three jobs: one was in a small industrial town in Poland, and one was in a town in Portugal, Braga. And I thought, I don't want to go to a small industrial town with their culture, and I don’t want to learn another Latin or Romance-based language.”

The third option was Budapest, and Richard’s impressive linguistic ability was immediately attracted to the idea of tackling Hungarian.

“Also, my favourite composers – I mean I always liked Bartók, and then later I got into Ligeti too.  I remember as a student hearing the Ligeti Chamber Concerto in London, and that was, yeah, it was a revelation. I loved it!

“So, there were three aspects: one was the music, the second was that the language is interesting, and the third was that when I was in Mantua [before Rome] for a while, I'd shared a flat with a woman who then came to Budapest to work – we exchanged a couple of postcards and she said I’d love it here because the music life is great and the school is great to work at -  and that's the school where I got a job. Three things pointed towards Budapest, and so I came in 1993, in September.”

Richard was looking forward to the challenge of acquiring Hungarian, and he bought a copy of Teach Yourself Hungarian whilst he was still resident in Rome.

“What I remember is that I certainly learnt the alphabet. I think that's a mistake people sometimes miss with learning Hungarian. And it's worth putting a week or a lesson into just learning the letters individually because when I arrived, I could pronounce everything that I could read.  And that was an enormous help when you're asking for things in shops, especially in those days. Now people are a bit more used to hearing foreigners’ pronunciation, but in ‘93 it was really unusual.

“In the school they gave us a term’s worth of lessons for free. And then periodically we managed to negotiate another term’s worth of free lessons.   But that was what got me speaking and being able to have the nerve to ask for the fruit and veg. at the market, and tickets at the cinema and things like that.”

Richard’s enthusiasm for the language led him to start reading poetry from bilingual editions. “The great thing with poetry is that it's natural to want to learn it by heart. And it's short. You can find a short poem, and you can have 4 lines or 8 lines, you can memorise it, and then you can internalise the grammar as well.”

The not uncommon combination of a passion for language alongside a love of music holds true also in Richard’s case. Having played for opera singers while he was in Rome, he sought to establish a musical aspect to his new life in Budapest. “I've got a piano in my flat, and I sing in a choir called Staccato. I've also accompanied them a couple of times. But now they’re a group of friends and I couldn't leave them.

Staccato – Richard circled in blue

“There have been times when the prospect of going somewhere else arises, and I've said actually, no, because of the quality of life here. There was a time when I had the opportunity to go to Shanghai and I was thinking: how many times would I be able to go cycling in Shanghai, and swimming and hiking?

I've always liked swimming, and a few years ago I started experimenting with dipping in cold water during the winter, too. It's not wise to do it alone, so there are groups for this all over the place. The Hungarian group I swim with is called the Cold Water Tribe.


Christmas Day swim with the Cold Water Tribe

“And the music as well. I mean, where else is going to give me what I have here? There was another option to go to France. I said no; by then I was deeply connected to the choir here.”

Richard’s work consists primarily of literary translation and texts on history of art and psychology, though he’s always keen to undertake projects which involve leaving his flat and interacting with people away from his computer.

On the topical question of using AI in his work he replies, “There are lots of reasons for not using AI. One is that it's enormously energy hungry and as it is, you know, there are 8 billion people on the planet and if we're all using AI to do our thinking, that's not sustainable. The other main thing is that not using it keeps you awake. I like to be kept on my toes. I’m sure it’s useful for translating legal texts, for example, but I wouldn’t use it for literature at the moment.”

Something else to keep Richard from mental stagnation is that he has embarked on studying jazz piano. “It's something I've been thinking of doing for ages and I recently got around to it.”

Books Richard has translated

It is now some thirty years since Richard arrived in Budapest, and as he reflects on the early days of his life here, he recalls some of his early impressions.

“I remember laughing at people for being grumpy. I guess that shows that I was slightly shocked. Maybe not shocked, but finding their grumpiness was ridiculous. What Hungarians thought was, you know, difficult – like dealing with the police and officialdom – for me, I mean, that had been more of a challenge in Italy because in Italy I remember being shouted down trying to get my residence permit extended, and being given different information by different officials and trying to tell somebody.

‘Yeah. But the guy last week said I had to do this,’ - and being shouted down. That’s never happened to me in Hungary. So if people don't shout at me, I can deal with it. So, it was rather just that Hungarians were generally morose.”

A seeming lack of clarity or logic is something else Richard continues to grapple with: “Things aren’t explained. What happens is that people regurgitate text as it appears in the law, in an act of Parliament or in the regulations, without breaking it down into bite-sized chunks for users. And I mean, that happens in journalism as well.

If I go to an English newspaper, I would expect it to be explained.  But when I go even to HVG – which is a decent newspaper – sometimes they'll quote things. And I'm thinking, yeah, but the fact is just quoted verbatim, and I wonder if the journalist has understood what the practical implications might be.

“There are some difficulties with bureaucracy – like this Ügyfélkapu thing… the options are there [on the webpage] but none of them says: and then you can set up your Ügyfélkapu Plus account. I know it’s not easy designing a website, because I tried to design a small one for myself – but the difference is that I’m not a profession website developer!” he laughs.

Budapest continues to cast its spell over Richard and he cannot think of circumstances that might prompt his departure from the city, “Other than being invaded by Russia,” or, indeed, abandoning his beloved 8^th District.


Exercise! Courtesy: Ádám Győrfi

 “It's really nice to be able to go to concerts and to the theatre and walk home afterwards. It’s very central. One of my neighbours is a piano teacher from the Academy…” He muses, “Yes, there was a stabbing a few years ago – but I’ve only been hit once and that was outside Déli station! [in Buda].

“Back in the 90s, my ex used to live on Rákóczi tér [once the centre of the red-light district] and his mother came to visit him; the landlady happened to come round when he wasn't at home. She came into the apartment and found an old woman there, and her automatic reaction was that his mother was a prostitute!

“The scariest thing that’s ever happened to me was when one night I fell into a hole in the road in Kabul, in Afghanistan, where I was teaching. And just for a split second I thought, ‘Oh, this is the end. We’re going to be kidnapped.’ But nothing like that has happened to me in the 8th district. Everything’s relative!”

Richard in Kabul – still photo from video, Zoltán Rozgonyi

Links: 

Richard’s Website 

Marion Merrick is author of Now You See It, Now You Don’t and House of Cards and the website Budapest Retro.

If you would like to be interviewed as a Surprising Expat, please write with a few details of what you do, to: Marion by clicking here.