Meet the institute’s new staff members, Borbála Buzás and Marcell Németh!

During the summer, the Finnish Institute in Hungary welcomed two new staff members: financial and administrative expert Borbála Buzás and producer Marcell Németh. Here are their greetings!

“My name is Borbála Buzás and I am FinnAgora’s new office administrator. My interest in Finland was sparked by rock music but that interest quickly transformed into an interest in the Finnish language and literature. I studied Swedish and Finnish at ELTE university where I finished my Master’s Degree in Finnish language and literature in 2017. After graduating I spent a six-month-long internship focusing on translation at the Finnish Literary Society in Helsinki. 

Previously I had worked at the Embassy of Sweden in Budapest and I worked as a journalist at my last job. At FinnAgora I mainly have administrative tasks and I also work at the Finnish Embassy which makes my role quite special. In my free time I translate poetry and I love knitting.”

“Hi, my name is Marcell. I am a media engineer by education, typographer by profession and a Suomi-fan at heart. When I was young, I founded the famous Magyar Taraj punk fanzine of the early 2000s with a friend, and my winding career ultimately took me to the field of cultural journalism, from which I joined the team of Müpa Budapest (then called Palace of Arts). I worked there for ten years, promoting mainly classical music events, and in the last few years also as editor-in-chief of the festival magazines published by Müpa. 

My first encounter with Finnish culture occurred when I was in the third grade, when I – not yet having any knowledge about the Finnish language and the linguistic relationship – gave a little plywood ship I built a Finnish name. (The vessel has long since disappeared, but I will always remember its name Pyhä saari (Holy Island)). Nearly two decades later, I spent four months in Finland on an Erasmus scholarship and fell in love with the Finnish way of life, the openness of the people, the brightness of nature, the sharpness of the air, and the scent of pine tar. When I returned to Budapest, my Finnish language studies continued, and after only a few years I was giving guided tours in Finnish at work.

My new role as a producer at FinnAgora fulfills my old dream of working for the benefit of Finnish culture and science. I am an avid concert-goer and my latest hobby is hunting for classic items of 20th century Finnish glass design at flea markets.”