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I think my story begins before I understood what it meant.
Long before I became a tattoo artist, before the machines, before the needles, before the first nervous line on real skin, there was drawing. I was still in gymnasium when I started copying tattoo designs. Tribal shapes, sharks, abstract forms, non-figurative designs – anything that had that powerful, permanent feeling of tattoo culture. I did not know much, but something about it pulled me in.
Back then, the idea was simple and almost secret: maybe one day I could become a tattoo artist.
I still have some of those old drawings somewhere. They were not perfect, but they were important. They were the first signs of a path I did not yet have the courage, discipline, or life experience to follow.
Art was never far from me. My mother was a painter, so I grew up around creativity. I knew the smell of paint, the silence of concentration, the strange seriousness of people who make things with their hands. Drawing and painting were part of the atmosphere around me. But being around art and becoming an artist are two different things. One is inherited by environment. The other has to be chosen.
And for a long time, I did not choose it.
As I got older, life pulled me in other directions. I met different people, started skipping school, and slowly drifted away from the version of myself who used to sit and draw tattoo designs. After gymnasium, instead of moving toward art, I got a job in one of the biggest cinema complexes in Hungary at the time, in Budapest. I worked on the floor, in the buffet, doing whatever needed to be done.
For three years, that became my life.
There was also military service – nine months that took me even further away from the dream I had once imagined. I still drew sometimes. Maybe I painted a little here and there. But it was not serious. It was more like touching something familiar for a moment and then walking away again.
The idea of becoming a tattoo artist disappeared from my mind.
Not because I stopped loving it. Not because I was not capable. But because sometimes life does not take your dream away in one dramatic moment. Sometimes it just distracts you, slowly, until you forget who you were trying to become.
Around that time, another kind of world entered my life: gambling.
During the last period of my cinema job, a guy I knew started taking me down to the casino in the city center. Electronic roulette machines. Lights. Noise. Money moving fast. At first it was entertainment, but it became more than that. I got hooked, and I lost a lot of money. It was not a good chapter, but it became part of the story, because strangely enough, the thing that pulled me down also led me somewhere important.
After I quit the cinema job, I did not know what to do with my life. I was looking for work when I found an announcement for a casino training school in Budapest. If you completed the training, you could get a job.
It sounded appealing. Maybe because I already knew the casino environment. Maybe because I needed direction. Maybe because I just needed money. So I applied.
But when the day of the interview came, I did not want to go.
I remember that moment clearly. I told my mother I was not going. I was not in the mood. I did not feel like it. I had already decided to stay home.
And then my mother exploded.
She told me I had applied, I had said I would go, and now I had to follow through. She pushed me, argued with me, forced me to take myself seriously for one moment when I did not want to.
That conversation changed my life.
If she had not pushed me that day, I would not have gone to the interview. If I had not gone to the interview, I would not have entered that profession. If I had not entered that profession, I would not have traveled the world, moved to Sweden, met the people I met, or eventually found my way back to art.
One decision. One morning. One argument with my mother.
Sometimes destiny does not arrive as a beautiful sign. Sometimes it arrives as your mother telling you to stop being stupid and go to the interview.
I went.
The casino years
I got into the training school, and after that I started working directly on real casino tables, with real money, in a real high-pressure environment. This was Budapest in the early 2000s, and the games were serious. Especially on weekends, the casino floor could be intense. Fast hands, sharp eyes, pressure from every direction. I learned the profession deeply there.
I worked in Tropicana Casino in Budapest for around a year and a half. What I did not know then was that this job would become my passport to the world.
In 2004, Hungary joined the European Union, and suddenly Europe felt more open. Around that time, recruiters from England came to Hungary looking for casino dealers. I wanted to travel. I wanted to see something outside what I knew. So I went to the interview.
The funny thing was, most of us were good dealers, but our English was terrible.
Still, we got the jobs.
At the beginning of January 2005, six or seven of us moved to Derby, England. The company rented a big house for us, with rooms for everyone. We were young, wild, free, and completely unprepared. We barely spoke English, and at work it was embarrassing. English colleagues would ask something in the break room, and I would sit there not understanding, not knowing how to answer.
It was uncomfortable, but it was also exactly what I needed.
When you have no other language to hide behind, you learn. Fast. Within a few months, we were already speaking enough English to survive, then enough to work, then enough to belong.
I stayed in Derby for about a year and a half. But I wanted more. I wanted ships. I wanted travel. I wanted the world.
Ships, Sweden and a life I could not predict
So I went to an interview for cruise ship work.
Before the interview, people warned me about the woman who would be there. They said she was tough, difficult, not easy to impress. I walked into a room full of people, tired from the night before, and when it was my turn to say a few words about myself, I made everyone laugh.
That helped.
Later, in the face-to-face interview, she asked me a simple question:
If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?
At that time, I was very into Goa trance, psytrance, and rave culture. So I told her honestly:
Goa, India.
There were not many cruise ships going to Goa. But there was one ship doing a world cruise, and that ship stopped there.
I got placed on that ship.
At the time, I did not understand how significant that was. Looking back, I believe she liked me, and maybe she helped make it happen. That ship became one of the most important chapters of my life.
Because on that ship, I met a girl.
We would be together for sixteen years. We would have a son together, Damien. My life did not just change professionally during that time. It changed personally, emotionally, completely.
After my first eight-month contract, I followed her to another ship: Carnival Pride. That ship sailed from Long Beach, Los Angeles, down the west coast of Mexico – Mazatlan, Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta. Every Sunday we were back in Long Beach. It was a strange and beautiful life: ocean, work, ports, movement, freedom, exhaustion, adventure.
After about six months, we decided to quit the company and return to Hungary. Just like that. One day to another. We left the ship, flew home, and planned to get jobs with Royal Caribbean.
We were experienced dealers by then, so getting accepted was not the problem. The problem was waiting. They told us it would take time to receive a contract. We waited maybe two months, and our money started running out.
So we made another decision.
We had friends from the ships who were working in Swedish casinos. We contacted them, they spoke to managers, and soon we were invited to Sweden for an interview. We flew from Hungary to Sweden, got the job, flew back, packed our things, and within a week moved to Sweden.
That was 2008, just before the financial crash.
When the crash came, the money on ships was no longer so attractive, and when the Royal Caribbean contract finally arrived, we did not go. We stayed in Sweden.
And now it is 2026, and I am still here.
Winning, losing and waking up
For a while, Sweden became the place where I proved myself in the casino world. In 2009, I entered a competition to find the best dealer in Sweden. First, I competed in Gothenburg and took second place, which qualified me for the national competition in Stockholm.
I remember that day clearly.
I remember what I was wearing: an orange, stretchy T-shirt. I was young, around twenty-eight or twenty-nine. I was training, my body felt strong, my arms were pumped, and I walked into that competition with confidence. Maybe too much confidence. But I felt proud. I felt like I belonged there. I knew I was good at what I did.
And I won.
I became the best dealer in Sweden.
That recognition meant a lot to me. It gave me proof that I could master something. That I could compete and win. That I was not just passing through life randomly – I could become excellent.
But success can be dangerous when you are not mature enough to handle it.
After winning, I expected promotion. I wanted to become an inspector. I believed I had earned it. When it did not happen as quickly as I thought it should, frustration started to build. My relationship was not in a good place, and inside I was becoming restless, angry, and disappointed.
I was good at my job, but I was not in control of myself.
One day, my manager came to me and said the promotion was close. Maybe it was meant as encouragement. Maybe it was a real opportunity. But I was having a bad day, and instead of responding with patience or professionalism, I reacted with ego.
I said something like, If you want to promote me, promote me. Do not come and tell me it is around the corner. I should have been promoted already.
That moment cost me.
I never got promoted. Even the part-time inspector work I had started doing disappeared. Slowly, I understood that my casino career in Sweden was stuck. I could stay and remain a dealer forever, or I could leave and build something else.
That realization hurt, but it also woke me up.
The question was: what else could I do?
The forgotten hand
I had gymnasium, no higher education, no clear professional skill outside the casino world. At least, that is what I thought.
Then something came back to me.
I remembered that I used to draw.
Not I remembered I wanted to be a tattoo artist. That came later. First, it was simply drawing. The forgotten hand. The old ability. The part of me that had been waiting quietly underneath all the noise.
I picked up paper and a pen. I had a photo of my girlfriend at the time on my phone, and I decided to test myself.
Can I still draw?
I sat down and drew her.
And somehow, the drawing looked like her.
Not perfect, maybe. But real enough. Strong enough. Enough to make me understand that the skill had not disappeared. It had been asleep.
That drawing became another turning point in my life.
I realized: I can draw. Maybe I can use this. Maybe I can build something from this.
Because I did not speak Swedish well at the time, I decided to put my work in Sweden on hold and move back to Hungary to study graphic design for two years. That school gave me fundamentals: drawing, design, Photoshop, composition, visual thinking. It gave me structure. It helped me reconnect with art not just as something emotional, but as something professional.
During the second year, I was living close to my mother, who was still painting. She had a young woman working with her named Vivian. Vivian was talented, creative, and interested in tattooing too. We talked many times about how tattooing was cool, how it could be a real profession, how it could make money, how it could become something.
But for a while, it was only talk.
Then one day Vivian called me.
I bought a tattoo machine, she said. I bought the equipment. Do you want to try it?
Of course I wanted to try it.
She came over from Budapest to my mother’s place with the machine and the equipment. I called my cousin and asked him to come over. He already had three outlined stars tattooed on his arm, and we decided to color them in.
We had no real idea what we were doing.
Vivian colored one star. I colored one star. My mother colored one star.
It sounds almost funny now, but that was the beginning. Three people, one machine, no real experience, and three little stars on my cousin’s arm. My first tattoo was not in a perfect studio with perfect knowledge and perfect confidence. It was raw, clumsy, human, and unforgettable.
The next day, I went out and bought my own machine, ink cups, colors, and everything I needed to begin.
That was the moment the old dream returned – not as a fantasy anymore, but as a decision.
The boy who once copied tattoo designs in gymnasium had taken a long road away from himself. He had gone through cinemas, military service, gambling, casinos, England, cruise ships, India, Mexico, Sweden, success, ego, disappointment, fatherhood, mistakes, and hard lessons.
But the hand remembered.
The artist had not disappeared.
He had simply been waiting for the right moment to come back.
And when I finally picked up the machine, I was not starting from nothing. I was bringing all of it with me – the pressure of the casino floor, the discipline of dealing cards, the movement of ships, the languages I had learned, the countries I had seen, the mistakes that humbled me, and the hunger to build a different life.
That is how my tattoo journey began.
Not in a straight line. Not perfectly. Not the way I imagined when I was young.
But maybe that is why it became mine.
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