Replika Monologue: Buy and Sell

In the Replika Monologue of this issue a man in his early thirties tells the stories of the various shady deals and legal enterprises he has managed during the last fifteen years of his life. Géza, who is currently the owner and manager of a prosperous travel agency, lives in a Hungarian town. Keeping his anonymity, he speaks openly and convincingly about how he started his businesses by buying and selling watches and jewelry, how he expanded his deals to the illicit exchange of hard currencies, how he made money even during his military service, and how he accumulated a small fortune by the age of twenty. An especially interesting part in his monologue is the period of the late eighties and early nineties, when the liberalization of traveling to Western countries facilitated his semi-legal trading activities between Vienna and his home town. Contrary to most Hungarians, who used the opportunity of traveling to Austria to import Western consumer goods, Géza shipped Hungarian products to Austria: musical scores to the conservatories of Vienna.