Thursday 9 June 2011

Unnofficial Taxi Drivers or Stanning without Seatbelts

Public transport in St Petersburg is a bemusing and difficult thing for non-Russians to accept. There really is no legal public transport after midnight. No metro, no night buses, no night trams, no Marshrutkas. It is supplemented by unmarked, completely unregistered taxis driven by immigrants which dissolve magically from the flow of traffic when you wave your arm towards the road. It's called car-catching. Post metro closure, they flip into the bus bays like dominoes 1,2,3 if you so much as hesitate near the edge of a main drag. If the price is unsatisfactory, the door slams and up pulls the next taxi.  This can happen several times until some driver offers a low enough price - one girl I know travels every-where for 150 roubles.

Theres a lot of risk involved in a young woman jumping into a car with a stranger yet many women use this service casually and  habitually. It says something about the strange Russian attitude towards trust.

For a long time,  all of seven months,  I have remained very English and mostly tried to dissuade friends from going any-where near the taxi, insisting that we walk through the snow and cold. The other day I became relaxed enough into the Russian way of things (de-Europeanised enough) to catch a car on my own. In the middle of the day and in the middle of the town, admittedly.

 The catching was rather difficult as I was quite shy and hesitant about the catching, holding my arm out rather pathetically in a space that was probably only for buses. I moved along and a ' ' pulled up. 'Marinsky, 100 rubles, possible?' 'To the Marinsky, 150.'150rubles  is the standard price for any-where in the centre, although taxi drivers will often try to charge foreigners a lot more. I only had a hundred in change. 'Well, if a hundred is all you have, jump in.'

'Finnish?'

'No, English.'

We started along the road and after a couple of polite questions,  then the Stan story began. This is customary, at least it happens in most taxis I get. Reminiscing about the home-land with other strangers adrift in this great city.

'I'm from Tajakistan where there are beautiful mountains. I've been to Germany, Budapest, Romania, Lithuania. We speak Russian very well. The Soviet Union was very strong. There was a strong war and 3 millions of our men went to fight the Americans in Cuba. Strong, strong' Here he mimes shooting a rifle. He loves English language music and the radio is playing American golden oldies; 'Killing me softly' and country. 'I can't understand the songs but I love them. It's very fine music. I feel it here.' He taps his chest. In his soul.'My son speaks English perfectly. He's a lawyer. I only learnt German at school.