Home and away with József Szájer

25 men in the buff

The amiable and extroverted József Szájer from Hungary would easily have been unknown to me or many other people until he broke the lockdown rules in Brussels and that would have meant nothing, he was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and should have gotten a get out of jail free card with his diplomatic passport.

However, with a slightly closer look at this matter reveals that Jozsef has been a very naughty boy, he apparent clambered down a gutter from the window of a first floor apartment, which apparently was above a gay bar, but let us not jump to unfounded conclusions, but it was where a party of 25 naked men had gathered for everything left to our imagination.

A big boy about

When the police apprehended Jozsef, he had on himself, a rucksack full of narcotics that he avers he did not use, and I believe him, quite absolutely. If there was anything to spice up this story, he has been married to Tünde Handó, a jurist since 1983 and they have a 33-year old daughter, Fanni Szájer, whose paternal grandmother is Edit Kiss. All names that might travel well in Hungary but will run the gauntlet of humour you cannot squelch from an English perspective.

One can assume that 25 nude men in an apartment are just admiring who is the bigger boy along with discussing the physics, chemistry, or even the biology of piston mechanics. That anyone would implicate these fine men in activities of a lewd or sexual nature would be beyond the pale.

Saint at home, a sinner abroad

Yet, one must not overlook that Jozsef of a right-wing persuasion helped make the life of people who are not heterosexual unbearable, intolerable, impossible, threatened, and precarious in Hungary whilst living free to explore all sorts of proclivities in Belgium. It is not like he had committed a grievous sin until it appeared that he might have been living a double life, one at home in Hungary and another away in Belgium, and by all respects, this looks a bit hypocritical if not downright atrocious, for which, very little sympathy will be present and forgiveness is far from view.

As so, Jozsef quite suddenly and almost quietly, immediately resigned his posting to Brussels and sought to put it all behind him, but not that easily, on the part of his family, he does need to mend relationships, but for the others that have suffered for his politics and policies, he will walk the path of notoriety, ignominy and infamy, and much more besides. Shame on him. Maybe the title of the blog should have read crudely, Homo and a gay with József Szájer.

[The Guardian: Right-wing Hungarian MEP resigns for attending 'sex party' that broke Belgian lockdown]

[EuroNews: Brussels 'sex party': Hungarian MEP József Szájer fled along a gutter with drugs in backpack]

Thought Picnic: Seconds from rag-doll demise

Longing for short bridges

It could be a busy road and I rarely go jay-walking if I can help it. I would most likely walk up to the traffic lights or seek a zebra-crossing.

Even if I know I have right-of-way I would probably wait to see the whites of the eyes of approaching drivers of vehicles with an acknowledgement of my intent before I cross.

I still remember vividly crossing under the bridge of the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway in Lagos under the Isolo overpass where the pedestrian crossing added almost a kilometre to what was just a 150 metre perilous dash. All the builders of that bridge had to do was attach two staircases on either side of the expressway, but that kind of thinking would have been too radical. See A road runs through it.

Seconds from ragdoll demise

A few days before the War Against Indiscipline Corps instituted by the Buhari regime had caught me crossing “illegally” and I had to do a 20-minute frog-jump punishment amongst other culprits.

So, this morning, seeing I was in a rush and the corps members are not around, I made for the usual dash across a road that allows speeds well over 100 kilometres an hour, I heard shouts and screams, maybe warnings but was oblivious of the fact that they were meant for me as a vehicle whizzed past the front of me seconds before I became a ragdoll of an accident causality leading to a preventable fatality before I saw my twentieth year.

I do not think I realised my close shave with death until days or maybe weeks afterwards when the whole episode played back like a movie in slow-motion but a sixth sense, premonition or foreboding had taken hold that I never ever made that dash ever again.

Sight and right

One other handicap I did not realise I had was a lazy eye coupled with astigmatism which could have been corrected in childhood which meant I could not reasonably judge distance and approaching speed, it made me crap at tennis because I just never could judge where the ball would be, that knowledge now is an active determinant in how I cross roads.

So, as I got to this crossing a tall police van with all lights flashing but no sirens blaring drove up the wrong way and parked just in front of the traffic lights that pedestrians need to determine when to cross the road. Those lights even serve a greater importance to those who cannot make it across the road in a timely fashion in a city with the most impatient of drivers.

I waved and remonstrated to the policeman driver who wondered what my problem was, so I shouted out to him, “You are blocking the lights and the way for pedestrians to cross the road.” At first, he wanted to ignore my protest but I waved even more frantically to the lights on my side, the fact I wanted to cross and well my cane had a statement of its own too.

Insistence and persistence pays

He eventually got my message and moved his vehicle out of the illegally parked section he was in to another place where he would have also complied with parking laws. The police are there to facilitate upholding the law not break them with impunity, in my humble opinion.

Thanking him, I crossed the road thinking I had rediscovered that latent spark of that Akin I once knew would insist on things being just the way they were supposed to be. Maybe there is a chance that this rediscovery will permeate other parts of my expression that seem to be suffering from a loss of confidence, esteem and status – I really do need to find myself again.

Meanwhile, a letter arrived for my first appointment for therapy which I should have had from the moment I was diagnosed with cancer some 21 months ago – I have crazy ideas I still want to execute in whatever is left of my sometimes quite exciting life of experiences and somewhat bizarre tales.

Another Belgian Waffle

Listless and restless

I found myself in Belgium this weekend having promised myself on Friday that I would stay in the Netherlands and try to be like a resident.

In my restlessness, I had to get out of the house before I ended up spending the whole weekend cooped up like an offending prisoner in solitary confinement.

In the end, I did nothing, I stayed in Antwerp overnight without doing much but catching much needed sleep in my hotel room, as if I cannot get that kind of sleep at home.

Service and pique

I checked out early and headed for Brussels where this time I had a friendly tiller clerk at the ticket office administer to my needs. The last time I was there, I was buffeted by a pig-ignorant buffoon who I expressly told I want a 1^st Class return to Brussels and I ended up with a 2^nd Class ticket.

When I returned to change the ticket, he said, I never told him I wanted a 1^st Class ticket as well as refusing to speak in English – I was almost incensed with rage then I decided there was no point giving him the pleasure of annoying me.

Lockers open for pissing

When I got to Brussels Central Station, I can report that they have adjusted the self-service luggage lockers to take round figures of coinage rather than the €3.10 or €3.60 which I reported in April 2006.

Progress, I would say that I walked into town to be deliberately underwhelmed once again by the great pissing attraction of Manneken Pis, bedecked in one of his changing costumes and urinating through an opening in his clothes.

Lately cancelled and out-of-date

That feeling of things working in Brussels was soon dashed as I waited to get on the train to Amsterdam which was to leave at 17:19 – in fact, I was surprised that it was not displayed as running late, it is usually late.

Suffice it to say that after 8 trains left the platform I was to get the train from that the estimated 15 minute lateness, the notice board finally conceded that it could not determine when the train, one station away in Brussels Zuid where it starts the journey would arrive – a journey of 7 minutes at most.

In the end, we all decided the train was cancelled and no one had the courtesy to tell us that was the case.

Shopping for some snack, I took a bag of luxury madeleines off the shelf and had the urge to check the expiry dates, all four bags had expired, one was even almost 3 weeks out of date - I took all 4 bags to the till and told the assistant; these should not be on the shelves - I was tempted to go back and check 30 minutes later to see if they had returned to the shelves.

I love England for the fact that shops can be closed by health and safety officers for selling perishables that are out-of-date. I see too many of these infringements in supermarkets in the Netherlands too, it appears they do not take these things seriously at all.

Bunched up train crowds

At 18:19, the next scheduled train arrived just a minute late and we got on. Before we left Belgium there was only standing room the 1^st Class carriages, still some people had the gall to put part of their luggage on seats.

It was interesting to see from the crowd of about 15 people who could have demanded those seats, very few are that assertive. I found that really strange, there was a point where I felt I should ask the people to offer those seats to others.

The conductors walking through the trains should have felt duty bound to ensure those standing could sit where luggage occupied seats, but they did nothing.

For a crowded coach, it was a bit peaceful and those who had their phones going off recklessly got looks that made them behave.

In the snippet of time which was my experience – maybe Brussels doesn’t really work just yet, but things are improving.

Why Brussels doesn't work

Enduring the pain of travel

Whilst I am not a jet-setter in reality, I am probably the railway train equivalent of one.

This time, I did not have to run for the train and there were enough people in the first class area for me not to have to bother about safety, security, company and over-arching awareness requiring me to sit in the other class with a first class ticket.

Strangely, the last time I did that, a man got on my coach with his own music, he started to play the guitar; in the first class area, I could have told him to stop; here, I probably would have the guitar smashed over my head.

I listened as the “out-of-tune” guitar strummed The Caterwaul featuring Banshee and Hyena in D-minor – allegro.

The things we do to endure the pain of travel.

See Brussels and weep

This time, it was Brussels (forget the spelling, it has as many variants as a meaningless anagram where s, x and l may feature, all depending on your mother tongue).

It is the capital of Europe, they say, and it probably is a microcosm of what is so wrong about Europe and nothing is happening to remedy it.

It is the where you have heard so much about the great statue and having found the statue, you are utterly under-whelmed – great is used in the context of myth not size.

I saw Europe through the use of one of those dreaded self-service station lockers.

Lucky locks for working lockers

Basically, there are three sizes with different prices; the instructions are available in an electronic panel with buttons for one of four languages – Flemish (The Dutch spoken in Belgium), French, German and English.

You put your baggage, luggage, wares whatever in, close the door and the lock engages, the electronic panel/screen then shows you the price, put in your coins and you retrieve a bar-coded ticket.

When retrieving your luggage, just show the bar-coded ticket to the supermarket till scanner and the door automatically opens.

Now that is a process that works with the technology offered.

Here be dragons of Brussels

How do you give this system a Brussels perspective?

Look at the pricing in Euros – 2.10, 2.60 and 3.10, now that is easy if you were in South Korea you could pay with your mobile, or some other system would allow the use of a money card.

You need coins here, chinking coins. Some of you might wonder, why wasn’t the pricing rounded off, well, that might be the price a committee had arrived at to balance equality of access with a break-even possibility. Really?

Okay, let us break it down with numismatics; you are allowed to use Euro coins that offers the choice of 1 and 2 Euros, then Euro-cents which have 50, 20, 10, you cannot use 5, 2 or 1 Euro-cent(s).

Big deal! You say, I’ll just put in the money and get change – Oops, it wants the exact amount.

Then put any amount above the price you need to have your luggage safe, it spews out the extra money, then everything you put in and the door opens.

Why, am I having this problem, I do not have 10 Euro-cents on me and all those prices require you have 10 Euro-cents regardless of how rich you are.

I probably have a hundreds of Euros of coins below 50 Euro-cents in a drawer at home; you suddenly wished you had installed that device that could have teleported that 10 Euro-cent coin immediately.

Aha! The smart people who designed this system probably have a coin exchanger around like they do in Amsterdam and hopefully it dispenses all denominations. Zilch!

Switch to anger management, do not hit your head against the locker, you need it to think.

Service desk, closed!

Probably, I might perchance have that elusive coin in one of my million pockets, starting with the first, none, and finally, a stray coin which must have slipped into some cranny in my baggage materialises like a gold coin out of a fish mouth.

Perspiring, exhausted, irate but determined, the last coin goes in and my baggage is secure.

Exactly, the locker is a symptom

This is the sense of frustration that greets every European, many of us are Europhile, just as we need to use the lockers, but every aspect of daily life is complicated all the more by ideas that suit every metric but the people.

The prices on the lockers could easily have been rounded off; it is easier to ask someone to change money for you than to ask for spare change.

People are more likely to have two 50 Euro-cent pieces than five 10 Euro-cent pieces.

In many senses, it shows how Europe was designed with a customer in mind, but the customer probably does not have the resources to avail themselves of the potentials.

Beyond that, many decisions are about national self-interest rather than community values, it informs why the Common Agricultural Policy cannot be reformed, nimble East-European Countries are feared by Old Europe and big countries can flout the economic rules for maintaining the stability of the Euro.

Europe is not working

The “one size fits all rules” do not work for that fact that it is a seriously unequal partnership of nations with almost nothing in common, more reason why the constitution was rejected by two of the founding nations.

Viewing Europe through a the locker regime in Brussels Central Station is probably a bit frivolous, but it also happens to be the station where a kid was murdered in a crowded place for not giving up his MP3 player. It probably informs the solemn and numerous bouquets of flowers placed at the entrance to the concourse.

Even in crowds, safety is relative and security is uncertain if you are in Brussels – that is the Ode to Joy of the Europe we live in today.

Update - July 2008

The lockers at the Brussels Central Station now takes money rounded off to 50 cents or the Euro.