After failing several times to get into university, Szervánszky became a labourer and later a freelance journalist, TV editor and disc jockey. He left Hungary in 1979 and took casual work in Paris before receiving political asylum in Sweden. There he was a labourer again, an oil-rig worker in Norway, and then a student of philosophy and sociology at the University of Stockholm. He later settled in Switzerland, working as a hotel porter in Lugano. He repatriated in 1991. He has done a series of travel films on contract for Hungarian Television.