About
What can a couple of teachers with three children do at the dawn of the regime change if they want to live a little better than before? Well, they start a business!
Drawing on Laci’s sports background, his experience as a PE teacher, and his organizational skills, we decided to buy canoes and boost the family budget by running water tours.
And if we’re going to do something, let’s make it special. We started right away with a Strasbourg–Paris canoe trip, and then one European river after another followed: Loire, Marne, Moselle, Meuse, Thames, Danube, Seine, etc. It became clear that wherever our canoes went, there were also great cycling trails in the valleys. We were already doing three things, including winter ski camps, and then we added a fourth: white-water rafting adventures. You can see how we did this in our first blog post. We were the first to organize something like this, and we were the first to have a base abroad.
By then, we had moved beyond our humble start and established a travel agency. Picture a family travel agency where the parents and the two older kids guide tours, and the youngest child also has significant duties. By then, we were no longer working as teachers, since we had committed ourselves fully to this venture. We achieved great success, and at one point, we were on par with OTP Travel’s adventure tour department.
Time hasn’t been kind to us either. The retired teacher couple now lives in a small village in Zala, near Lake Balaton. The two older children are also already living and working abroad. However, sitting at home is not in either of our natures. We are no longer running a travel agency, and my husband also leads fewer bike tours now. For my part, I decided to restart SoftRafting as a sole entrepreneur, and I hope the successful run goes on as long as it remains fun for us.
We wholeheartedly recommend our idea to everyone—please receive it with our best wishes:
Leskóné Csonki Mária