The Lada Of My Life

One car sent me on a meandering route to adulthood

- Peter Klein

IN 1993, I bought a beatup old car that changed my life.

I had just moved from New York to Budapest, the city of my parents’ birth. While Hungarian was my mother tongue, I still spoke it like a ten year old, and I wanted to learn to speak it like a grown-up. I also wanted to get to know my few remaining relatives beyond the once-a-decade visits we had made during my childhood.

Across the border, war was underway in the disintegrating Yugoslavia, and with the Berlin Wall down in Germany, issues such as national identity and economic inequity were arising. Former Soviet satellites were beginning experiments with democracy and cap italism. As a young journalist, I had a healthy ego, and I also thought I could make some contributions to covering this complex region.