Week 1: Marafko Laszlo - Author, Editor and Reporter

The 3rd day in Hungary and I met another of my father's friends and relative, Marafko Laszlo or Laci as he is known to friends.

Laci is a published author now retired from the Budapest press. He has had a very full life, even reporting on the Vietnam war in North Vietnam, from the perspective of Soviet Hungary. In total I met him 3 times as we had a lot to talk about. His father began the Marafko genealogy many years ago and passed on the work to him. Independently, I began my work in 2010 and could confirm his work in late 2011 which was a reconfirmation of my work as well. The difference being that I undertook the whole of the Marafko family, whilst his work concentrated on his line only. The other difference is that he continued the tree to the present day, while I've decided to stop as far as written accessible records are available - being 1895 to be perfectly safe.

Marafko Laszlo in his younger years

Marafko Laszlo, myself with a different pug shirt and Kapus Feri.

Laci and I immediately began to discuss data, especially the phonetic transformations of the family name of Marafko from the original Moravko. We had little time together as Feri is a competitive table tennis player and had to go a few hours later. Here, I'm feeling a lot better. I had an extreme incident about 3am that morning when the pain was so severe that I woke up screaming - swearing at myself. This woke the household, but I soon calmed down and went back to sleep.
I was really glad to meet him twice more, once at his home and the other on a Budapesti street where we had a quick celebration of my birthday.
I realized that Laci and I had a connection that came from our own university disciplines. This aspect of the value of meeting the intelligentsia wasn't apparent to me until much later and almost in hindsight.

Kapus Feri's table tennis team May 2013