The train brought the cyclist to town. You couldn't tell how old he was; moreover, he was plump rather than sporty, his stocky legs and portly waist not really like a cyclist. Even so, he had boarded the train with his cycling shoes making a tapping noise, his cycling shorts tight round his thighs, and he didn't even take his helmet and goggles off. Gloves covered his hands, and his ticket, money and papers were in the pocket of his T-shirt. He kept wiping his sweating forehead, and told the other passengers without being solicited that he was going to Szerencs because that was where the longest, 120-kilometre bicycle tour set off from over the hills of Zemplén. He had resolved to radically change his life and had become convinced that this was the sort of test that would push him through his fears and doubts. So, when his bicycle was handed down from the first carriage, before springing into the saddle and wheeling out in front of the yellow and white station, he called out the famous sentence the medieval Hungarian Chronicler Anonymus is said to have attributed to the noble Father Árpád:

This is the day, in this land, when God giveth fortune to the chieftains Ond and Tarcal, a sentence, be it known, that Anonymus never wrote, nor Árpád ever said, in spite of which it is good to think this was how Mád, Szerencs, Szerencs-Ond, Tállya, Rátka, and Tarcal got their names. For if something is given a name, then it is born; which is also true vice versa: it is difficult to believe that something can exist without a name, either on the map or in our memories. So, the cyclist cried out the sentence on the platform, and rode off behind the Szerencs chocolate factory; full of verve, he rode straight to the Rákóczi Castle, and the people he swept past could feel beyond any doubt that the change in his life had already begun. His tyres threw up pebbles on the roadside.

But just as he reached the Castle, something unexpected must have happened. Instead of speeding along further, he stopped, leaned on the handles of the bicycle, and hung his head.

Then, turning his bike around, he rode back to the Sweet Museum and the Szerencs chocolate shop at least as fast as he had come. Leaning his bike against the wall, he removed the saddlebags and went in. Inside he took out his indispensable cycling equipment - lights, pump, flask, a spare valve-cap - , and put them on the counter. Even so, when he came out of the chocolate shop the bags were so packed full that he could hardly fix them back on to the rack.

In this manner he set off for a second time. Though it is true he didn't bother calling out again the famous sentence of Anonymus and Árpád.

They say that when he had got on his bike, he pushed back his helmet and the wind blowing in his face fluttered his hair.

He was seen riding in a northerly direction, towards the Árpád Hill. But what had become of his hill tour, and whether his life had really changed with the two bags of chocolate, no one ever knew.

A sweet life.

For the cyclist never returned. He had gone, not even leaving dust behind him. He vanished, just like those sweet sad good old days have vanished.