Ukrainian refugees on Hungarian hospitality

The following two stories about Ukrainian refugees having been to hell and back, as well as Hungarians’ hospitality towards them, are nothing short of heartwarming.

“My wife cried…”

Eugene Katchalov, a professional poker player, was born in Kyiv, but he now lives in New York. On 5 March, he posted on Twitter that they were having breakfast in a café in Budapest with his wife, and when another customer overheard them speaking Ukrainian, she simply paid their bill on the way out.

Although she was told that they did not need it, the woman from Budapest replied that she knew, but it was not about the money, it was about the gesture. “My wife cried,” Katchalov writes.

But that is not the end of the story: half an hour later, a man came up to them, gave them his business card, and said should they need anything, they just have to reach out to him. “I can’t find the words,” Katchalov added.

In a third tweet, the poker champion added that when he tried to give the waiter a sizeable tip as he was leaving, the waiter rushed to return it. As Katchalov did not take it back, the waiter told him that he would donate the money to an organisation that helped Ukraine.

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“We were touched by the kindness we received”

As Index reported, one of the capital’s biggest hotels, Hotel Budapest, opened its doors to temporarily accommodate Ukrainian refugees. By now, out of 100 free spaces, 84 have been taken.

“We find that some of the refugees have no specific plans for the future, for example, in one of our rooms, there is a pregnant mother with her husband and their two-year-old child. They left everything behind, came here with two suitcases and are waiting for things to get better,”