List of gratitudes 2025

This year will remain in my life as the golden milestone (milliarium aureum) of my scientific, academic career: I have not enough words to express my gratitude to God and for my enduring power of not giving up and being a dreamer even after so many years. I started this year by writing, for the third time, a 120-page-long research application – 30–40 days spent in the amazing University Library of Szeged (6–7 hours of writing daily). I was incredibly lucky with colleagues from the library and the university, but also with several scholars from Hungary and abroad who helped me in the application process. At the same time, I was preparing my habilitation lectures (later published as two articles on religious glocalisation in the Danubian provinces). My short visit to Sicily in January was great, but not as inspiring as I expected (constantly raining). I had amazing meetings and gained new friends in Budapest, where I spent most of my weekends this year.

My academic “luck” and year of miracles started in May, when I had the chance to spend two amazing weeks in Belgrade with my dear colleagues from the Archaeological Institute. In June, I visited Vienna with my students. The miraculous letter came on the 1st of July: we won the Lendület (Momentum) research grant, which finally allows us to research the cult of Roman Mithras and its reception history in Central-Eastern Europe. This is the first project focusing on Roman religion at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the first such project at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Szeged. In August, the second miracle happened: I won the Humboldt Research Fellowship for nine months. A few weeks later, the third letter arrived: I was named Young Researcher of the University in 2025. No words, just gratitude. The year had some failures or personal mistakes too: my health was put on second or third position in the busiest periods. Although this year I was lucky to avoid severe flu or infections, my obesity definitely represents an issue now.

Here is my list of gratitude for 2025:

• happy for my old and new friends whom I have in Budapest, Szeged, Vienna, Rome, Cluj, Sibiu, and many other cities in Europe and beyond. Some of them I wished to visit, but this year was less about moving around

• thankful for my brother and his friend who brought me all my academic books in Szeged and I could finally unite my library. Now its a monumental personal library specialised on antiquity, Roman history and religion 

• grateful for my colleagues and friends who helped me with the Lendület application, and thankful to the Academy for awarding me this chance

• grateful for my colleagues in Mainz, who helped me a lot with the Humboldt application

• thankful to have the chance to see Sicily, Krakow, Balatonkenese, Vienna and Targu Mures again this year. Krakow was an instant love, probably the most beautiful city in Central-Eastern Europe. Grateful for my Italian colleagues and friends who made the IAHR conference for me so special

• grateful for my colleagues and co-authors who helped me with my publications this year: an edited book, five studies, five book reviews, and several popularising articles

I wish you all a happy new year and hope to continue our common experience also in 2026!

List of gratitudes 2024

This year was a very intense one. My photo album with "selected photos of 2024" in my Facebook profile shows almost 450 pictures, almost double as in 2023 or 2022. Only 2019 was so intense as this year. This year was about Vienna: I was honored to have a JESH project at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, which gave me the opportunity to study in several libraries and institutions of Vienna. I was lucky to travel a lot this year again: in Erfurt, Graz, Belgrade, Ljubljana, Alba Iulia, Cluj, Balatonkenese, Esztergom, Rome (twice...oh, god), Brno. Published a lot of papers, probably too much this year. This was at least honored by the faculty and university. The last two month of the year was hard: I was struggling twice with some flu, sinusitis and I am writing these lines again in fever. Way too much work. Next year l will manage myself - but life will do it anyway - to rest more. I will certainly need a gym-trainer too.

Here is my list of gratitudes for 2024:

- happy for my friends, those few who are with me in Szeged, Budapest and those who are far in cities I lived or visited. Their number are growing. Especially grateful for my Vienna friends, who helped me enourmously. I love you all.

- happy and grateful for my colleagues, who helped me a lot in my recent, big publications. Young scholars with full hearth and ambition.

- greatful to be so lucky, to discover several new Roman reliefs or statues: as you are already know, not in excavations, but in private collections or museum depos. 

- greatful to see Rome, Lake Albano and so many other beautiful sites this year in the above named cities. I can't even list them. These beauties are the motors of live together with the kind meetings with friends during these trips

- greatful for the amazing concert of Coldplay.  It was my long time dream to see them live. I was singing their songs for days on metro, on the streets, in the train. Loved also the concert 

- greatful for the two short scholarships I won this year for 2025 and 2026 (sadly, only few months). The challange of the next year(s?) will be to find another, long-term scholarship or side-job (as most of Hungarian scholars have 2-3 jobs or financial sources - don't ask my opinion about this, you certainly know it).

- grateful and happy to visit for the first time Ljubljana and Slovenia: such a beautiful city and warm people. Hope to return soon. The same fantastic first time experience I had in Brno: a lovely city, which I want to visit again.

- greatful for my students, colleagues in Szeged and all around Europe and beyond. We always learn together from each other, which is rare nowadays.

Wish you all a happy new year and hope to see you soon!

 

List of gratitudes 2023

 Another year just passed. Tempus fugit, and this is getting more and more real if I count the numbers of white hair in my beard. But, that is still considered sexy and that is how the age of 36 should be. 

A continuation of the previous mad year of wars and transhumanism, we are now visibly entering the age of the anthropocene, shaped by more and more agressive political dualism (gnosticism as Voegelin argued) and a new wave of transhumanism, where AI is getting way too much importance. Not the tendencies we, from humanities like: and we should not.

 2023 for me was a dynamic, busy and important year.  The year was marked by my amazing trip in Andalusia, where I had real experiences of divination and epiphany. A trip which I will never forget. That marked my year: I was more joyful, had an incredible force of work and the year passed much faster as I expected. Here are some of the key moments of my year, for which I am grateful:

• Grateful for my family, friends (old and new from this year) for their support and patiance 
• Grateful for my amazing experience in Andalusia: the beautiful faces, eyes and sunset, that inspired me for the rest of the year
• Happy to visit this year Malaga (twice!), Cordoba, Fuengirola, Frankfurt, London, Varaždinske Toplice, Cluj, Madrid, Münster and Vienna again (6 countries)
• Glad for my friends from Balatonkenese and Veszprém for the amazing Balaton-exprience this year. 
• Happy that I was brave enough to transform my summer into a constant festival: I was at 9 concerts in 3 different events and festivals. Glad I listened again live Moderat and Nils Frahm, my never ending sources of inspiration.
• Happy that I get tenured at the Department of Religious Studies at Uni Szeged. It was a long journey, full with pain and sacrifices. But I think, it was meant to be.
• Grateful for my new project in Vienna and all the publications, collaborations I made this year. It was again, a very busy year
• I learned also from the unsuccesful applications we had (Lendület, OTKA): it made me stronger and we will try as much as we can to make it fancy enough. Soon or later, Mithras will arrive in Szeged, city of the Sunshine (!).
• Happy to meet new colleagues and friends in Münster and Madrid, two amazing conferences I attended this year. Reminds me that conferences worth only offline: face to face, with lived experiences and interactions. 
• Glad, I had 2-3 months in the year when I was going to gym with some relevant results. Sadly, in autumn I failed to continue. 

Overall, it was a nice, active year. I hope for a similar one in 2024, where most of my time will be about Vienna-Szeged-Budapest, 3 conferences already confirmed and 3-4 BRILL chapters to write. 

Wish you all a beautiful and happy new year with kisses and hugs of Fortuna.

Beautiful moments from my 2023: 

List of gratitudes 2022

 Needless to say sadly, 2022 was now the third hard year we are facing since the pre-pandemic period. It seems that these maladies are comming like in old myths and histories, together one after another. The war did not affect us directly, but it does our everyday life and politics daily.

In this new madness which affects more and more the world and made an almost gnostic dualism in the West, an artificial "left" and "right" war (which actually is more complex), I tried to find sanity and my own islands of happiness in meetings, personal experiences, a record number of conferences and travelling. This year was so intense than the previous 2 together. Extraordinary in the accummulated experiences and academic achievements, but also very demanding for my body and soul. Next year I will put more effort to spend time with myself and will put aside the academic life, at least on nr. 2 or 3. 

I don't have illusions when it comes to the future year, that our global struggles as humanity will continue in 2023 too, but I do hope that these evil energies will not win and the energy of creation will conquer all of us.

Here is my list of gratitudes for 2022: 

• I am grateful for my family and friends, those few who always helped me in this year and those who are far from me, but we are in constant and living connection. Their physical and spiritual aid is priceless and represents the human fuel of life in a world of transhumanism. 
• I am happy to spend so many amazing hours with friends and colleagues in Split, Vienna, Budapest, Sibiu, Cluj, Bontida, Balatonfüred, Rome, Athens, Zagreb, Poetovio, Erfurt, Graz and Timisoara. Amazing experiences, although way too much for a year. 
• Glad to publish the major results of my previous 3 years research on Roman religion in the Danubian provinces (a book, a digital map and at least 11 studies). After my PhD, this was the most demanding and hardest job I done.
• Glad to see live again Moderat, GusGus, Molchat Doma, Acid Arab and many other amazing musical experiences in this summer. 
• Happy to see so many amazing museums and libraries in 2022 in Vienna and Rome especially. 
• Glad that I am alive and avoided major health issues, although I had several flues and viruses this year too. 
• Happy I still have a job in academia, which is more and more difficult today, especially for my generation. I feel lucky in many sense.
• Grateful for those who helped me in Szeged and Vienna to receive a habilitation stipendium, which allows me to have a decent life and research perspectives for the next 3 years. 
• Happy, that I found this year new friends and allies, although its not easy today to built up new relationships and friendships. I lost few colleagues this year too, who cannot accept my views on politics, biopolitics and other issues from this gnostic, dualist world.

Lets hope, we will have a peaceful year in 2023, or at least those who want wars and division will fail.