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It was already ten years after the failure of the 1848 Revolution when Vilmos Geier, born into a Hungarian/German-speaking family in Óbuda, left Pest and Buda, and moved to the town of Miskolc, having been attracted there by an opportunity to work in the civil service. This was a year when, if you were at all concerned with the events of the world, you would little conceal your joy at the crushing defeat of the Austrian army at Solferino. Or, should you no longer put any trust in a hopeful turn of events, you could at least listen to the riveting of railway sleepers all over the country. Nonetheless, no sooner had Vilmos Geier moved to Miskolc than he became engaged to the youngest daughter of a family in the town with Slovak ancestry on the maternal side. The family, sniffing the heady air of the times before the Revolution, had Hungarianized their name to Jakabfi. That there was something in the gossip about their haste was proven by the birth of a son already the same year. The baby was christened Vilmos after his father. Geier the younger grew up at the railway station, listening to the clickety-clack and whistles of the trains. He could note how the colour of the buttons on his father's uniform changed to glittering gold. One hot summer's day, a goods train jumped the rails while going over the points in the shunting yard, and sheep fell out tumbling down one upon the other, their blood staining their broken bones and the wagon planks. Geier the younger smelt the blood and the coal smoke, and couldn't move for shock until a black-capped railway man put his hand on his shoulder, and said to him: "Don't you fear death, son; only fear that you might not have really lived."
He too as a matter of course became a railway man, entering into service four years after the 1867 Compromise with Austria. In the first year of the new century he married Mária Szente from Rakamaz. In the same year, 1901, their son was born, and also christened Vilmos. Geier spent the whole year shepherding the workers of the renowned Ferenc Pfaff, watching the massive station hall being built as it rose up from the ground. During both world wars, the family lived there in the official quarters of the station; true, only the youngest Geier worked as a railwayman, holding his peaked cap in his hand as he listened to the treacherous whirring of the bombs. Geier the elder lived to see peace only because, as he himself said, seeing all the destruction, he had been too unhappy even to die. The fourth Geier came to do his studies in Budapest, but dutifully returned to the town at the foot of the Avas Hill. By coincidence, his school bore the name of Donát Bánki, who had been born the very same year the eldest Geier had arrived in Miskolc.
The fifth Vilmos Geier didn't work for the railways. After finishing his studies at school, he moved away from his parents' home, and seldom visited the town of his birth. In 2003, he returned for the funeral of his mother, the last person in the family to live in Miskolc. After spending two days there, he set off back to the capital, and, as he was crossing Kandó Square, he looked up at the clock and noticed the restored façade of the station hall. He stopped, having spotted three dates, 1859, 1901 and 2003, on the façade of the red-brick, white-ribbed building with its three turrets.
1859 stood for the foundation of the station and the arrival of his great-great grandfather in the town. 1901 stood for the construction of the building by Ferenc Pfaff and the birth of his grandfather. And 2003 stood for the renovation of the building and for himself as he was now catching the train to Budapest. Not ever again to look back.
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