Ottawa

Life eventually took us to Ottawa, Ontario, for my wife's studies, so I switched universities too and continued at Carleton University. A proper job was nearly impossible, since I spoke English and Hungarian but no French. So I became a produce clerk at a grocery store while studying. Interesting times, to put it politically correctly: living at the poverty line in a foreign country, barely making ends meet, and getting yelled at by my boss for not turning the apples the right way.

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A smiling person in a red jacket waving beneath a giant black spider sculpture outside a glass-towered gallery in Ottawa — Ottawa, under the giant spider outside the National Gallery.

It didn't help that my wife later left for her doctorate studies on Long Island, New York, so I was alone in Ottawa with my university and my rotten tomatoes. My whole last year there I was on my own, and every three weeks I went to see her in New York. That's one reason I've been to New York so many times.

Ottawa had its fun sides too. The neighborhood we lived in was quite rough, which made it a great place for police car spotting: from our balcony we could see the numbers of the police cars. And in winter it was fun to skate to school on the Rideau Canal.

I did finish Carleton, in political science. I never worked a single day in politics, but it sharpened my critical thinking. So Ottawa wasn't only the dark side of being poor, desperate and depressed: I became a Canadian citizen there and earned my university degree. Those were real achievements.

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A man in a graduation cap and gown standing with his arm around a smiling woman in a red dress who holds a red diploma folder — Graduating from Carleton University in Ottawa, 2009.

A citizenship ceremony in Ottawa: a Mountie in red serge, an official in a suit, and a man in a red shirt shaking hands in front of a carved Pacific Northwest wall design — Becoming a Canadian citizen in Ottawa, 2009.

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