windows, while a rifle-toting soldier on board fired back at the attackers. The ten-year-old crouched under his seat, terrified but also a little annoyed.
“It struck meat that point that grownups had really no idea how to live,”
Csikszentmihalyi told me some sixty-five years later.
His train would turnout to be the last to cross the Danube River for many years.
Shortly after its departure, airstrikes destroyed Hungary’s major bridges.
The Csikszentmihalyis were well educated and well connected, but the war flattened their lives. Of the relatives on the train platform that morning, more than half would be dead five months later. One of Csikszentmihalyi’s brothers spent six years doing hard labor in the Ural Mountains. Another was killed fighting the Soviets.
“The whole experience got me
thinking Csikszentmihalyi said, recalling his ten-year-old self. There has got to be abetter way to live than this.”
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