The heady, hedonistic summer in which I became a life-long foreigner

I have spent almost all my adult life as a foreigner. When I graduated from Oxford I faced a stark choice: work for a living or leave the country. As I did not wish ever to have to get up in the morning, toil in an office or travel on public transport, the path was clear. I moved to Budapest with the intention of opening a bar.

It was the summer of 1993, and the newly free nations of central Europe had become an irresistible magnet for self-styled bohemians from across the western world. Budapest was cheap. It was fun. My Hungarian friends were furiously hedonistic, manic-depressive, wildly ambitious and creative. My American buddies were aimless, highly educated young slackers like myself. They fancied themselves the heirs of the Hemingway generation who settled in 1920s Paris.