Fourteen years ago, on a warm June day, I was sitting in a café on Ráday Street with my boyfriend. He was working in Budapest as an American diplomat, and his assignment was coming to an end in just two months. “Are you sure you’ll follow me—wherever I end up in the world?” he asked. Looking back, my confident “yes” was wrapped in pink clouds and a fair amount of boldness.

His job requires relocating every two to three years, and in that dreamy moment, I imagined myself strolling through Central Park, buying fresh basil at markets in Rome, and attending plays in London.

Reality turned out to be far more rustic, tangled—and wonderfully unpredictable.
I volunteered for a children’s organization in Beijing, welcomed VIP guests at a luxury hotel in Washington, D.C., awaited the birth of my daughter in Senegal, applied my communication background to HR in China, taught Hungarian to enthusiastic Americans, worked as a full-time mom, and reported from Bosnia for Radio Bézs in Hungary.

My hobbies adapted to wherever we lived: I biked alongside thousands of locals through Beijing’s bustling streets, took online writing classes during the sweltering heat of Dakar, explored American graffiti in art galleries built on old Beijing factory sites, danced barefoot to African drums in the sand, jogged along the Pearl River in Guangzhou, and hiked the hills surrounding Sarajevo. For the past five years, I’ve been sharing my stories and reflections on our lifestyle on the Hungarian magazine site wmn.hu.

I was six when my classmate Jutka walked into school with a beautiful doll one day. “My dad brought it from the end of the world,” she said. I had no idea where the end of the world was, but her words stayed with me.
Was there a cliff at the edge of it? What did it look like? Who lived there?

I didn’t know the answers, but I was sure of one thing: the place must be foreign, far away—and full of wonder.
Since then, I’ve been to many places that fit that childhood vision. And this is where I tell those stories.