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Just back from Budapest and really fascinated by one thing.  Ok, there are several thousand Hungarians in Ireland, though well outnumbered by the Poles, who number from 64,000 to anything up to 300,000 (which I think is a gross exaggeration) and I met quite a few back in the 1990s when I was involved with the Kodály Society of Ireland, not to mention working with quite a few Hungarians, but I never realised what the people are like en masse.  One thing that had struck me from my previous experience was sometimes that they were quite odd, and secondly that they seemed to have a strong sense of fun.  What I had missed out was their glamorousness.

Everywhere, it seemed, everybody went out day-to-day in their Sunday best.  Didn't matter if you are 30 or 60, fat or thin, good looking or an affront to the eyesight - the best clothing seemed necessary, along with lovely handbags, nice jewelery and well coiffed hair.  And the men were the same - beautifully dressed up in shirts and ties, good leather shoes - even in the evenings on weekdays.  It seems that appearance is very important to this culture.  Manners were also striking - something I found very striking.

Earlier this year I witnessed what I can only describe as a charge of the light brigade from a bunch of Americans to get on the first bus on a sight-seeing trip in San Francisco.  (Aside from being entirely unnecessary, I was really struck by the "me first" mentality).  Of course, we in Ireland and Britain are every bit as bad.  Try getting off a bus or train at rush hour and not only will you have to shoulder charge your way through people who block the ways on and off, people also literally try to walk through commuters trying to exit trains and buses.  Rudeness is almost a common way of life - made worse by rugby scrum boarding patterns on Ryanair flights and dreadful pushing a shoving.

For example, an Irish man yesterday had two older children - to be honest, I cannot describe them as children but as piglets, who aside from trying to push past my semi disabled mother in the queue for the flight, tried to push and shove their way past us in the ailse of the aircraft as we packed our bags into the overhead lockers of the cabin.  While their ignoramous of a caveman father (well dressed and seemingly respectable) didn't say a word.  My mother has had 3 operations in recent months and carries a walking stick, but this clearly meant nothing to the Irish piglets and their hogmaster who clearly saw themselves as far superior to anybody else in the world and undeserving of respect.

Hungarians, in contrast, patiently wait for people to disembark, are quite unagressive and not in any way noisy.  We also noted how few Hungarian youngsters drank openly in public spaces, and how less agressive and attention seeking they were on the one occasion when we did spy a group drinking outside the Astoria metro station - sure they were enjoying a can or two, but left passers by alone and kept to themselves.  The vast majority seemed content enough to enjoy fast food and coffee in McDonalds, but didn't seem to feel the need to scream their presence to the world going by, unlike desperate for attention Irish and British teens (and adults).

This seems to fit in with the story that somebody called into one of the RTE radio stations with earlier this year about a bunch of Polish people enjoying a picnic in the Phoenix park while a bunch of Irish youths engaged in a booze-fuelled and aggressive orgy close-by.  As somebody pointed out, the Poles would remember a lovely spring day in the park, the Irish piglets will remember nothing.

One thing I also noticed was the multifaceted nature of continental cafe culture.  People seem to think that if you make the decor nice and continental in style, serve wine and throw in an expresso machine, you get cafe culture.  But this is very different to whats on the continent.  The "drinking emporium" mentality isn't there in the cafes (though no doubt its there in the industrial nightclubs), but also the strong emphasis on food, serving up until 11pm is one facet.  Another is the fact that many of these styles of coffee bars don't open until 18:00 in the evening, especially if they stay open later.  I recall many years ago drinking in one in Wolfenbüttel in Germany, and being served a drinking at the untimely hour of 3:55.  5 minutes later I was being shooed out the door - there is no concept of "drink up" time - the real curse of Irish binge drinking culture.  You are out the door at closing time, no matter what.

Similarly, in San Francisco bars close at a relatively timid 2am, but here is the thing - many clubs just keep going without serving booze.  That to me seems like a fairly good idea.  In Australia there are lock-ins, but really this only spills the problem out onto streets.  I would suggest that if club opening hours were reformed to allow clubs to stay open without serving alcohol (I noticed in Palm Springs that some bars would stay open and just serve soft drinks and water) it might help a little.  Perhaps a continental style fixed closing style might end the rounds culture of buying several rounds 5 minutes before the bell goes just to have something to extend drink-up time as late as possible.  Then we could consider allowing clubs and pubs to stay open but just not serve booze.

Another solution, perhaps, would be to control only the total opening hours per week then let individual establishments decide on how to allocate those hours.   Then you could viably run a club say weekends only, but keep it open around the clock.  Its just a suggestion (one that I think wouldn't really be viable as around the clock clubbing tends to be associated with pill use, and pill users often don't drink, which would make the clubs unprofitable).

One thing that does also assist the continental bars though, is locating in urban areas away from disturbing neighbours, while at the same time maintaining shorter opening hours for premises based in residential areas.  For example it seems crazy to me that loads of bars are based on Douglas street and allowed wasteful late licenses that really are a waste as some residents just complain about the noise and the police more or less persecute the bar owners for using legally obtained permits to open late.  (The gay bar of course, gets particularly heavy handed treated).