Week 2: Marafko Gabor and the Alternative Lifestyle

I stayed with Gabor and his family for 5 days, ending with a train trip to Kelenföld  pálya in Budapest where I met with my mother's side of the family. More on that later.
There were lots of significant experiences for me with Gabor. First was living in a traditional porta home. A long house with various structures built onto the ends of the house with a large, narrow block of land used as orchard trees, animal shelters and pens and the greater land being used to grow crops. Most portas had a water-well, though there was always a community well that anyone could use. This traditional lifestyle is what Gabor is aiming for, though with an alternative lifestyle twist.
The family's diet is mostly vegetarian. They have no credit cards and no debt. Their income is via Gabor's chosen trade of carpentry and log house building for which he had won awards. His wife Agota is a yoga and pilates instructor. Gabor has an operating knowledge of CNC machines and does travel to Austria to work when required. They make do with what they have and are generally at peace with the world, trading for goods and networking with individuals sharing a similar lifestyle. Gabor bought a ruined porta a few houses away from his rented property which he is going to demolish as he is building his own home  ~ using some of the beams and other materials from the old porta.

The old beams are in excellent condition

Obviously not habitable

The old shutters date this structure to the turn of the 20th century

The interior of one of the rooms

His new home - plans already handed in to the local council for approval - is an octagonal 'yurt' with at least one extension added - maybe one more for his considerable library of books and music.
I went around over a number of days taking pics of particulars that interested me in a historical perspective.

Interior hinge - The design is still used in modern day homes.

2 Straw drays (wagons) on top of each other - to be restored later.

Closeup of the wheel axle - I have a lot of respect for Gabor's skills in restoration

Ring the bell - Beautiful metalwork at least 100 years old.

Where do I stop!?!

The view from the end of the property looking at the Nagykölked church. Old Hungarian wheat growing on the right.

90 degrees to the right we see another village church over the wheat field.

Hungarian pumpkin 'Tok' just sprouting.

The view to Austria on the forest tree line.

Szalma - wheat stalks ready for building the walls of Gabor's new house.

 Trapping heat and insulating the new home can be done with having the right kind of wall structure. Normal portas have very thick walls. Gabor will use bricks made compressed stalks, exterior linings of wire netting to prevent rodent damage, covered with a thick layer of mud both inside and outside. The materials are cheap and at hand. He has almost all he needs to begin construction this summer.

New hinge installation on a farm gate built by Gabor that leads into...

Agota's father Erno's porta, next door to Gabor's block. - note the ladder to the attic

Erno's well 25 metres in depth.

Well interior: See the tiny camera flash being relfected?

"Watch out - the dog bites" - well, they don't really <grin>

 Lots of pics with few words. There are many more which I'll make accessible somehow later in another blog post. The vision that Gabor has strikes a chord in my heart. He is a pioneer of a kind with a lifestyle that I almost followed back here in Australia - in a new, symbiotic world. His major aim is to show others how we can live outside the banking industry, the value of produce and co-operation, teaching life skills with his wife Agota.
I asked him if I was in anyway influential in his life choices when we met in 1979.
His response astounded me, considering that there was very little contact in the intervening years.
Yes - the Australian aboriginal concepts of using only what is required, their music, my knowledge of Homeopathy at the time led him towards alternative medicines and the sickness of modern Europe, credit, debt and the slavery that most suffer under the present system.
This is from a guy that was bought up in Socialist Hungary, escaping to Austria and returning to assist his mother who died of cancer in the 90's.

Next post - Back in Budapest - Érd and my mother's relatives.