Katalin Nagy is a counsellor/psychologist working in Budapest at a psychotherapy centre and in private practice. With almost 20 years of expat life experience she has much empathy for the joys and difficulties of expat clients.
After a quiet childhood in socialist Budapest she moved to Cologne, Germany with her parents, where she attended a German secondary school. She then went on to study at university in Moscow, and graduated with an M.A. from the Institute of International Relations.
After coming back to Hungary she married a Hungarian diplomat, and they soon moved for their first assigment to Egypt. In Cairo she gave birth to a girl and a boy.
Katalin worked for many years as a journalist at the foreign policy department of the Hungarian News Agency (MTI). Her big carrier shift came during their five year stay in London, where she embarked on a counselling training course and started to study psychology at the Open University. She received her degree in 1997, and since then qualified in person-centred counselling, relaxation and symbol therapy and is currently training in psychodrama.
She presently lives with her husband and three children, three cats and a dog in Budafok in southern Budapest, and spends her days balancing work at LEA mothers home in Érd, at ELTE University, where she facilitates personal development groups for social worker students and is working with her clients on stress-related, emotional, existential and spiritual problems.
1. Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Budapest, but as a child spent all my summer vacations in the south of Hungary in a small village where my grandparents lived. They had a small farm where they kept pigs, chicken, ducks and turkeys. We wandered around all day with my cousins, we were very free and very happy.
2. What Hungarian traditions bring back fond memories of your childhood?
Húsvéti locsolkodás- on Easter Monday boys and young men visited the houses where girls were living, and watered them sprayed them with water, originally from a bucket, in later years water was replaced by perfume, which was sprayed on their hair. Girls offered painted red eggs in return.
3. What would you miss most if you moved away from Hungary?
Besides relatives, friends and my garden I would miss meggylekvár (sour cherry jam) and tejföl (sour cream).
4. Friends are in Budapest for a weekend - what must they absolutely see and do?
Watch the panorama from Gellért hill and visit a spa after a long day of sightseeing in the city and along the Danube.
5. What is your favourite Hungarian food?
Ponty rántva tartár mártással. (Baked carp with sauce tartare.) this is a dish which my family always has on the Christmas menu.
6. What is never missing from your kitchen?
Garlic and fresh herbs from the garden.
7. What is your favourite place in Hungary?
I love to have a walk on a Sunday afternoon at Tétényi fennsík (highland) a lovely protected nature park behind the Szoborpark (Statue Park) with monumental statues from the Communist era.
8. What career other than yours would you love to pursue?
The work I am doing now is the result of a choice made as an adult, I really love to do it and would not change it.
9. Whats a job you would definitely never want?
Being a dentist or a surgeon. I would never be able to extract a tooth or cut another persons body.
10. Where did you spend your last vacation?
In Croatia, on Krk island.
11. Where do you hope to spend your next one?
I hope to visit Angkor in Cambodia, where my daughter will be working on an international project.
12. What was your favourite band, film, or hobby as a teen?
In my early teens behind the Iron curtain I only knew Hungarian bands, like Illés and Omega. Later I loved Santana, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and Joan Baez.
13. What cant you resist?
Somlói galuska- a Hungarian dessert which everyone with a sweet-tooth must try!
14. Red wine or white?
I like semi-sweet red wine.
15. Kolbász or szalámi?
Not particularly fond of either of them.
16. Book or movie?
Both, but I more often have a chance to read, than to go and see a good film at the cinema.
17. Morning person or night person?
Not much choice with a school-age daughter.
18. Dog person or cat person?
Both, we have three cats and a young puppy.
19. Buda or Pest side?
I live in South Buda, and mainly work on this side of the Danube.
20. What would you say is your personal motto?
If you want to have peace and harmony in your relationships and in the world around you, try to create peace and harmony within yourself.