A Quick Step From Houston to Laredo

It was a close call, Ferenc and István had to leave the United States by the 17th of August, but they didn’t want to jump into some suicide mission without resources and a proper gear. They made it, but not without the help of others. Many individuals and communities helped. How many of them? Well, it’s hard to tell. Here’s a small list of them, hope it’s as close to complete as it gets. Unfortunately, due to some mysterious problem we lost many photos from the storage card.


The Veres, Hursán and Tanyi-Lapis families. Rózsa Lapis helped with a place to stay and an exquisite Hungarian chicken stew amongst other things. The boys spent some really good time in their company. To help the boys, Rózsa threw in her social capital as well.


Mariann Hochuli left Hungary after the Second World War and during the last few decades she has traveled around the word. Yet, she still speaks an impeccable Hungarian. The boys were amazed by her sharp mind, she was really generous and was a great company.


The WorldWalkers spent a week at Nancy’s place. A superb company and a true altruist. Ferenc and István received countless and invaluable help from her and her friends.


Like Rebecca, head of the Elves and More Foundation, an organization that collects and gives bicycles and gifts to impoverished children. So far they have handed out some 100.000 bikes. Rebecca helped the boys by creating more fruitful contacts, and the boys helped the foundation assembling a few bikes.


Drew Roberts (left) and his wife, Rebecca helped with important donations, the same as the Academy Sports and Outdoors in Houston. Louis A. Vetrano Jr. bought the boys their next pair of shoes. John E. Shirley (right) passed around the hat in an Independence Bank branch, the guys chipped in more than 250 bucks.

Drew was a key figure in the success of the story. Not only he helped financially and with his contacts, but he was the man who gave the boys a lift to San Antonio (where they visited Alamo), then to the Mexican border at Laredo. And Ferenc and István even tried a real Texan steak on their last night in the United States, thanks to him.


We’d all like to express how much we appreciate all the help Ferenc and István have received from all of you. Not forgetting our online community and our friends in Hungary and Serbia. So, there’s a small gap between Houston and Laredo, but the WorldWalk-Peacetour project goes on.