Ok, a little word about me, to complicate things...

When the police stops me, I have to ‘schmunzeln’. (This word doesn’t exist in English and it’s my favourite German word! ‘Smile’ is just not the same.) I know the confusion I create; showing a Dutch passport, a Swiss drivers license (I know I still have to change that), having a Hungarian name but being fluent in German. To make things complicated...

I am Dutch. Born and partly raised in Holland by my Dutch mom and Hungarian dad. Lived in Austria, UK, Switzerland and now in Munich. Studied marketing and worked mainly in HR, headhunting. Mother of 3 teenagers, two dogs, a cat and 5 Koi. Besides my job, in my spare time I always held a pencil, created, designed, or like my mother used to say ‘make something beautiful out of nothing’. Whether it would be designing a garden for friends, or friends of friends, advising them on colours to use, or designing a kitchen for a befriended kitchen company, when they didn’t know how to satisfy a demanding customer anymore. I cannot enter a room, a space without seeing things I would like to change, or fall in love completely when, to my opinion, every detail fits.

When we moved to Munich in 2010, I had to give up my job as a managing director of the Usthi Foundation, which was set up in 1976 by a Swissair pilot and his wife, who had seen so many misery in India. They founded orphanages and schools there. It influenced me. After integrating my children into German society and school system, I felt it was about time to do something different. I wanted to satisfy my passion for beautiful things. Having said that, one thing is of major importance to me. It is not just the looks that count! I don’t want to just provide a beautiful ‘face’, a superficial world. The world we live in is demanding, hectic, stressy, materialistic too. Besides looking at production processes, employment policies, a respectful handling of our recourses and the underprivileged, I pay attention to local production and local employment. Most of the companies I selected to intensely work with, share this vision. For the very few that don’t yet and I selected for other reasons, I planted this seed.

We lived in a tiny little house, actually the former horse stable of a beautiful old mansion in the Prinz Ludwigs Höhe. But way to small with 2 bedrooms for a family of five. Drawing, planning, constructing for over three years. With every stone moved, the idea grew of using this lovely little place for a concept that started to evoke in my head... I called it ‘tiiset rooms’. I wanted to create a place where I could show my ideas on interior and exterior rooms and all the great companies and their products I had come across visiting international fairs, in a real living environment. Sometimes it is so hard for people to image how things look like. This should make it a lot easier! It should become a place where we could invite clients for special events, open houses, open air concerts, vernissages... A place where people could meet, get inspired, be advised and where clients would be guided through their process of building or renovating their house in a very exclusive and private atmosphere.

With grateful thoughts to Georg who supports this business concept big times and allows also his nest to become something like a semi public place. To David who gave tiiset rooms its name many years ago and to the loves of my life my children Idse, Eppe and Jipke for drying their sinks after using and having the patience to deal with a mom who is nearly always busy!

I am so grateful tiiset rooms has been received ways better than I had ever dreamed of. And maybe one day... I will have my own school in India... or South Africa... another dream to follow!

Sincerely yours,

Bernike Szabo
tiiset rooms ​