This past weekend was one of the great weekends of my life. After an absence of almost one year (364 days to be precise) our ice skating rink opened on the Main Street once again.

It was great to share the joy of play with the children of Kosice, many of whom I had missed very much during the intervening year. The smiles of the many onlookers were also quite appreciated.

It was a special pleasure to share this experience on our unique "summer on ice" skating rink. The children had to make room for the dolphins, sea lions, and windsurfers that were at play with them.

Fourteen-year-old Oto Hudec, who conceived and executed the painting of the ice, deserves all of our thanks for bringing a touch of warmth to our winter. I am proud that we at Kosice Forum gave him and his friends the opportunity to do this great work (and thanks to Color s.r.o. for the paint).

We at Kosice Forum are very thankful to all those who supported our efforts to make this rink possible — and the list is quite long. It is a testament to the people of Kosice that so many people and so many institutions generously supported us in our efforts. With so many good-hearted people in this city, we know that Kosice is capable of much more.

We Made Mistakes

I would like to touch upon for a moment the process of bringing this rink about. As many Kosicans may know, we made mistakes during the preparation of the rink and had our share of bad luck. I loved these mistakes and bad luck. They reminded me that we were doing something important and that we would never give up.

It is part of what we want to show our fellow Kosicans: that you can make mistakes and suffer from bad luck, even in a highly public space, and still move on and experience sweet success in the end.

We must not fear failure or embarrassment. We must take chances and move forward if we are to reclaim fully Kosice's heritage as a wonderful city.

We did a much smarter job this year building the rink and we know from what we've learned from this year that we will do even better next year.

We have a very long-term perspective both for ourselves and for Kosice: to do each year better what we did in the previous year, and to do more and more with each coming year. In this way we hope the Kosice Forum will grow up with the city of Kosice.

Our goal is simply this: in our lifetimes (and we are young), to make Kosice the liveliest, most positive, best small city in the world.

This article was written for the Kosicky Vecer newspaper.