5 incredibly funny stories from taxi drivers.

In Ulyanovsk they remember all the Soviet names, but very strange things are happening on Moscow's Arbat.

1. Ulyanovsk

Vlad Taxi driver from Ulyanovsk, author of the BombilaGram Telegram channel.

Our city is divided into two parts by a river, and the people on both sides are completely different. It was hard for me to work in the Zavolzhsky district - residents there are guided by old names of places that have long been gone. This area was built during the Soviet period, and many locations are named by numbers: 32nd store, 44th market. The area is small, many taxi drivers are local, so people are used to saying things like, “Pull up to the right of the rusty fence where that red mongrel used to be.” No navigator will help here!

The Right Bank is much larger, taxi drivers do not know it so well, so passengers speak more uniformly. We also have a mysterious place called “Charka”. Many passengers asked to stop there, but I never understood what it was. Perhaps also some store that no longer exists. But I was able to roughly determine where to slow down when asked: “Stop at Charka.”

While working, I learned that there is an urban legend about the Sviyaga and Volga rivers. Allegedly, people living between them are more likely to experience negative emotions. I myself did not notice this - between these rivers are just the most prosperous areas of the city.

I worked as a taxi driver in other cities and noticed that the residents of Ulyanovsk have their own dialect: we pronounce words a little drawn out, we especially like to draw out the letter “o” at the end of words.

2. St. Petersburg

Evgeniy Taxi driver from St. Petersburg.

My adventures began on the second day of work. Closer to night, they called a car to a village on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. I arrive at a point on the map and find myself... in the middle of a field. In front of me is a man with a shovel and a heavy bag in his hands. My first thought: “We have to get out!” But the wheels skidded in the ground, and at that time the man came up and began to tell him that he simply urgently needed black soil! It turned out that his wife went on a business trip and asked to replant the flowers. But he had been drinking all week and forgot to do it. His wife is arriving tomorrow at 6 am, the shops are already closed - so he decided to dig up some soil in the field.

I had so many passengers in St. Petersburg! Party deputies, priests, even a deer herder from Yakutia who has traveled all over the world. In St. Petersburg, the most difficult time for taxi drivers is lunch rush hour in the Admiralteysky district. They like to order two or three cars, drive away with the first one that breaks through the traffic jams and cancel the rest. Therefore, many drivers switch off at lunchtime or go to work in other parts of the city.

The most controversial place in the center is Dumskaya. This is a party street full of underground bars. At night you can see people in all states there. Almost all passengers fall asleep during the trip home. In general, the difference in the population in different districts becomes visible in the evening: somewhere they fall asleep early, somewhere they don’t go to bed, Kupchino lives its own life, and the Nevsky district lives its own.

But the Soviet St. Petersburg intelligentsia really exists. I like to take people over 50. They are usually open and friendly and tell a lot of interesting things. I often drove one woman from the city to the region where her husband lived and worked; the journey took two hours. So, her husband did not let me go back until I had a snack: he made me tea and sandwiches, thanked me for bringing his wife home safe and sound.

In general, I have many good stories associated with trips around the Leningrad region. For example, I once took a woman to her dacha, and she gave me a bunch of vegetables from the garden as a gift. I was so touched by this that I then delivered her back to the city for free. Although one day I was called to a remote village in the Leningrad Region, where a man needed a taxi to get to... a store in the same village. It turned out that he did not want to get his rubber boots dirty. Which are designed for walking through puddles and mud. Moreover, he also paid me with a jar of change. It was funny, but I took it out of principle.

3. Chelyabinsk

Evgeniy Taxi driver from Chelyabinsk.

There is a place in our city that all taxi drivers do not like - this is the Chelyabinsk Pentagon. This is the name of a huge apartment building on Tchaikovsky Street. It has about 1,000 apartments and 28 entrances, some of which are located in the courtyard. If the order does not indicate the entrance number, there is no chance of quickly finding the passenger.

Cities in the Chelyabinsk region are often downright remote areas. I noticed that those who come from small towns are often frightened: “Why are you driving so fast? Can you change lanes less often? For them, the movement in the center looks too wild and chaotic, although this is how we are used to it.

There are names that all Chelyabinsk residents know, but those who come from other places will not understand. For example, “Diagon Yards”, “Eaglet”, “Svechki”, “Aurora”, “Ports” - and this is only in the Leninsky district. Five-story buildings in our city are often called “pyataki semistroya” - this is from a track by a Chelyabinsk group. We also have our own “Geneva” - an elite microdistrict in the suburbs.

Our people are pleasant in many ways. I have had cases where an order was canceled after a long wait, the person came out, apologized and paid for the downtime, adding a tip on top. This is always very cool, although, of course, the coolest thing is the adequacy of people and funny stories. What happens in a taxi!

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4. Moscow

Maxim Taxi driver from Moscow.

By some coincidence, the strangest orders always happened to me on Arbat. For example, once I was taking a family with a three-year-old child from a restaurant. On the way everyone fell asleep. When we arrived, I woke up the passengers, they got out, and I drove 10 meters away and stopped to smoke. Suddenly I saw with my peripheral vision that something had been forgotten in the back seat. I turn around - it’s a sleeping child! I called my parents, but they, half asleep, didn’t even immediately realize that they had forgotten their son in the taxi. Another order from Arbat was accompanied by a huge commentary, where passengers warned that they were “drunk, but very cheerful,” and apologized in advance. In the end, it truly was the most fun trip of my life. They joked a lot and sang well, I even turned off the radio and listened to them the whole way.

For a period of time I worked on a Rolls-Royce Phantom. During this time, I had many orders from celebrities: famous singers, even that very “golden voice of Russia,” TV presenters and comedians. Once I was transporting the CEO of a large grocery chain, and all the way he was interested in my opinion about the products in their stores. I honestly answered that there were delays and substandard conditions, and he wrote them down in a notebook. It was nice!

It’s very cool to work in the Moscow City area. It's beautiful and there's a nice crowd there. I noticed that passengers from there were the most polite and most often left reviews in the application.

5. Voronezh

Yuri Taxi driver from Voronezh.

I worked very intensively in a taxi - for example, in two years I could travel 300 thousand kilometers. He often traveled to different cities, just like a taxi driver-truck driver. I always tried to find out what interesting things I would encounter along the way, stop and look. I often saw funny names. What is, for example, the Ublya River or the village of Vydropuzhsk worth!

In Voronezh itself, being a taxi driver is quite comfortable. I don’t have any preferences; work in all regions is going about the same. Passengers, like all people, are very different - sometimes they are pleasant and well-mannered, sometimes they are rude. Personally, I have noticed that the degree of parenting usually does not depend on financial well-being.

Funny situations also happened. For example, one day I had to drive a woman who was moving. She had a lot of bags and packages that filled the entire trunk and back seat. She couldn’t close the trunk herself, I went out to help her and told her to get into the car. On the road I receive a call from the dispatcher: “Where are you?” I answer that it’s on order, I’m carrying a passenger. The dispatcher says: “Are you sure the passenger is with you?” I turn around and no one is there. The woman seemed to have gone to get more bags, and I thought she was already in the car. When I came back for her, she was furious and screaming that I had stolen her things. But in the end we settled everything and laughed together at this ridiculous situation.

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