The Queer-Led Fight to Feed Ukrainian Refugees in Budapest

“Tender” is a column about all of the beautiful, delicious, and liberating ways that LGBTQ+ people work with food. From production to preparation, local farms to reimaginings of the restaurant, our community is at the forefront of what it means to nourish and be nourished today. Read more from the series here.

On February 24, Anna Margit awoke to word that Russia was bombing Ukraine. The chef and organizer tousled her wavy dark blonde hair, donned an oversized button-up shirt, and rushed across town with her dog Zippy to begin a long day of cooking. Her body kicked into autopilot as she spun around the makeshift kitchen at Szeszgyár (pronounced sez-geeyar), a queer feminist community center and garden in the heart of Budapest. News of Russia’s attack came through over a patchy internet connection. Meanwhile, Margit roasted vegetables, marinated homemade seitan, and packed meals for her lunch delivery service. By that afternoon, all the 29-year-old could think was, “I have to do something, we have to do something,” she tells Them over a recent video call.

The sense of urgency was overwhelming. Within hours, Margit and members of Szeszgyár began mobilizing emergency housing and food for people directed to them from contacts at Kyiv Pride, Budapest Pride, and OMOH, a kinky queer techno collective. Szeszgyár proved good glue, connecting people via social media to spare beds and couches and raising funds for medicine, clothes, and plane tickets. After a few days of brainstorming how else to help, they announced a free pop-up restaurant and cafe at the center. Members signed up for shifts and disseminated flyers. In bold letters against a backdrop of blue and yellow they read: REFUGEES WELCOME AT SZESZGYÁR.

Since Russia’s invasion, more than 6 million people have been displaced inside of Ukraine. Over 4 million refugees have fled across the country’s neighboring borders, mostly to Poland. Those who can leave are encouraged to go to make room in cramped bunkers and bomb shelters for those who cannot. As of this writing, some 404,000 refugees have crossed into Hungary. Refugees who are queer, trans, and of color must navigate widespread racism, transphobia and homophobia in new cultural contexts. But in a small pocket in the center of Budapest, Szeszgyár offers a place of rest.

The community kitchen has quickly become a blur of people and produce. On any given day, a small fleet of mismatched knives thud against wooden cutting boards, peeling and dissecting knobby root vegetables. Neighbors, mostly queer and trans volunteers, rinse fresh herbs and lentils, dust fistfuls of spices, and stir bubbling pots that splurt hot vegetable broth into the air. They cook primarily Ukrainian dishes. By making plant-based meals, they ensure that people with religious dietary needs and allergies that might be overlooked by other relief efforts have something to eat.

If no one shows up, Margit and her team load up a cargo bike with food and bring it to the train station to meet new arrivals. Soup is made extra thick so that it won’t spill in transit and can be diluted with hot water to reheat when the train arrives. The first of many crowds spill out of the train cars hours before dawn, after traveling for days with little food, water or sleep. “There was no light behind their eyes,” Margit says. “Most of the people have lost everything.”

At the train station, hot meals are a comforting alternative to packaged dry foods dispersed by the state. But if aid workers don't recognize Margit, they are sometimes reluctant to take the food. Without an official permit or nonprofit status, Margit appeals to their shared spiritual beliefs instead. “I just tell them, ‘This food is sent by God!’,” Margit explains. “They were like, ‘If God sent this, then we’ll take it!’”

Anna Margit has steady eyes and a wide smile. She laughs easily and speaks in an effervescent stream of fresh ideas, half-hatched plans, and dreamy visions of a better world. She has the rousing confidence of someone who cannot sit still and isn’t afraid to be told no. Born in Transylvania and raised in Budapest, Margit studied architecture and moved to New York for work before visa issues brought her back home in 2019. Disillusioned with her career and craving queer community, Margit began hosting movie nights, art shows, cooking classes, and gender talks in the sunny open building where she initially lived.

Eventually, this space became Szeszgyár, named after the street it’s on. It literally translates to “alcohol distillery,” but also describes a place that extracts the most important part of something. At Szesgyár, this means offering a sense of community by creating a safe environment to nourish and be nourished. “People are weighed down by the government,” Margit explains. “There’s so much censorship, but when they see the possibilities of what we can build together outside of the system, they come alive.”

At first, she sublet spare rooms as studios and workspaces on a pay-what-you-can basis to help jumpstart local artists and small businesses, like her own off-the-books vegan catering service. One of the first artists was Lea Kalfus, who found the space through an online listing she mistook for housing. After visiting, the 25-year-old queer Swiss textile maker decided to move her knitting machine to Szeszgyár and soon began helping organize events. “We started to become friends,” says Kalfus of Margit. “And Szeszgyár became something that we do together. It’s a place where I could get involved and feel that I belong.”

By 2021, the interior space was bursting at the seams and a two-acre plot of land across the street that had been for sale for over twenty years had their name on it. All they had to do was ask. “I called up the owner and said, ‘Can I borrow your land for a community garden?’ And they said yes,” Margit chuckles. “I guess no one had bothered to ask.”

Eager for green space following a year of pandemic isolation, neighbors came out in droves with their kids and pets to play and explore. The land itself had an opportunity to flourish. After decades of being mowed to a grassy stubble, plants were free to grow wild.

Nowadays, picnic tables, raised garden mounds, and compost ditches dot the once-sparse landscape. Meandering footpaths cut through large swaths of native grasses and pollinators like towering sunflowers. Garden tools are low-tech or secondhand, and building materials are either foraged or repurposed. On work days, people gather fallen tree branches to build fencing for garden beds and wield pitchforks to scatter hay and manure from a nearby ranch to enrich the soil. Spending money is a last resort.

Garden work doubles as political practice. By decommodifying their relationship with the land and leaving room for rewilding, Szeszgyár is helping to redefine public land use in Budapest, where manicured city parks restrict social activity and discourage the growth of local biodiversity. “How can we create an ecosystem that is as much for humans as other animals, plants and insects?” asks Margit, who views the land and its inhabitants as collaborators. “Ecological restoration must include rebuilding what we have lost to industrialization and state violence.”

Since the war began, Kalfus and her flatmates have independently hosted close to twenty people who found them through a social media repost by one of her flatmates. “I love that about our relationship,” she says. “We don’t need to ask each other first. We know we will host people. That’s how we can really help.”

Most people coming through Budapest are on their way to another destination, to stay with friends and family or to reach more hospitable places, such as Berlin, Denmark and Switzerland. Gendered travel restrictions have also impacted who ends up reaching Szesgyár, where cisgender lesbian couples represent a majority of LGBTQ+ refugees.

Borders always stifle the movement of the most marginalized, but during wartime they pose additional hurdles for trans people, who may be barred from leaving if the gender marker on their ID doesn’t match their presentation. If that box is checked male, it’s nearly impossible for them to cross, as they will be expected to stay and fight. 

Even for people carrying the required paperwork, the border is often a place of unpredictable cruelty. A queer couple in contact with Margit had their HIV/AIDS medication confiscated by Ukrainian officials.

Six weeks since Szeszgyár redirected its operations to feed and house refugees, many of the volunteers are struggling with their mental health after bearing witness to the tyranny of war. Looking back, the days and weeks that followed the invasion have been a blur.

“It feels like one long day,” Margit sighs, the corners of her eyes collapsing in exhaustion. That one long day finally ended once they started setting boundaries to prevent the urgency from becoming all-consuming. Kalfus spent a few days in Switzerland for work where she struggled with emotional breakdowns after weeks of holding it together. Margit hides in a storage closet when volunteers overwhelm her with questions. Everyone has their coping strategies.

Refugees who are staying in Budapest for the time being have started to volunteer, too, helping to cook and work in the garden. Small acts of mutual aid each day give Margit hope. “It feels like a small window of time when there is actually freedom here,” she says. “We are small enough for the government not to notice us, and we are big enough to show people that we actually can make things better.”

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