Bare-faced cheek lands Dutchman €150 fine

Take note – story published 8 years and 1 month ago

An excessive show of Dutch courage has left a visitor from the Netherlands €150 worse off than when he arrived in Latvia after he was caught dropping his trousers outside the Latvian parliament.  

The cheeky show of political dissent was reported by Riga municipal police who were alerted by State Police to the fact that a foreign citizen had been spotted near the Saeima building "crawling in the gutter" in a state of undeniable undress, most specifically in the posterior region of his trousers.

This is not regarded as an acceptable dress code for parliamentary business, even among people who are elected officials.

Though Oscar Wilde famously said (likely while wearing trousers) "We are all in the gutter, only some of us are looking at the stars," such poetic musing appears not to have been the primary motivation of the transgressor in this case, who was more interested in showing passers-by his tulip and pancakes.

In other words, he was mooning the bastion of Latvian democracy both fore and aft, though whether this was an act of subversive political satire or merely the result of one glass of Heineken too many can be left to the reader's imagination.

While some allowance might be made for one who calls the fleshpots of Amsterdam home, this cut little ice with police who were quickly on the scene to return this outrageous orangeman to a level of clothedness that would not scandalize public decency - beside the very chamber where such  high-minded matters as amendments to the Latvian constitution and family values were only recently debated.

The low behavior from the low countryman earned him a fine of €150, a possible chill in an area which should not be chilled and the thanks of a grateful nation.

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