• 04 Jan, 2026 *

The first time I went online, it felt like freedom.

I was no longer just a kid in a small Eastern European country. Suddenly I was part of the whole world.

The early internet was a blast. I feel very lucky to have lived in the 90s and to be there at the birth of the web. I could talk about dial-up modems and the strange beeping sounds when you tried to connect, but that was only the surface. The real change was deeper.

I was twelve when my dad showed me the internet. He did not fully understand it yet, but he felt that it was something big. He wanted his kids to see it early. I was very lucky to have access to a computer and the internet in his office.

The real turning point came one Christmas Eve.

My sister and I got a small box. When I opened it, I started to cry. It is the first and last time I ever cried because of a present. Inside was a 56k modem and a card with a MATAV username and password for internet access.

From that day on I did not need to go to my dad’s office anymore. I could go online from my own bedroom on my 486 PC. Looking back, this was one of the biggest turning points in my life. Everything I have today comes from that moment. I still work on the web and build things online at 40.

After that my days had a rhythm. Every afternoon at 16:00 a special tariff started. You could use the internet until the next morning for almost nothing. I remember sitting in my room, waiting for the clock to hit four, then listening to the modem sounds and feeling like the whole world just opened again.

Everything changed again when I found IRC. For the first time I could talk to people from other countries in real time. It was magic. Today everyone carries the internet in their pocket, but back then this was unbelievable. A 13 year old kid from a small Hungarian city could talk to anyone.

I went deep into a Hungarian hacker subculture around 1999. I still remember watching TV with my parents when the news reported that a hacker group had taken down the website of MATAV, the Hungarian telecom company. They replaced it with a punk style page that said Y2K in big Win95 Paint letters.

I ran to my computer to tell my IRC friends. The craziest part was that some people in my channel were part of that group. A few months later they told me parts of the story. It blew my mind. I was 13 and learning about the internet from the smartest kids in the country.

I am 40 now, but that kid is still inside me. Still curious. Still looking for people who think the same way.

The internet has changed a lot. Big tech controls most of it now and the old feeling is hard to find. But sometimes I still discover small corners that feel like the early days. When that happens, it feels like a time machine.

A few weeks ago I found Bearblog and it really clicked with me. I am not a great writer, but I want to share some thoughts and memories.

So here is my first post. Thank you Bearblog and the community. Even if nobody reads this, I will be reading you.