taxi drivers

I have decided that taxi drivers are interesting people. Since I take taxis so often, I have met quite a few. Every now and then I get the same ones back. They often remember me, too. Maybe it is the accent.

There are a few things about some taxi drivers that annoy me, though. One, there is this guy who doesn't listen to my directions as to where to go even though he doesn't know where to go or how to get there. That bothers me. I have had him a few times now and it is always when I am late (because he is late picking me up) and then he takes the longest, most indirect route possible. It is annoying. I also get annoyed when taxi drivers take a longer route than is necessary. I understand that sometimes traffic is faster with the longer route. However, when the fare is 5 Euro more than other drivers, there's a problem. I haven't decided if they take the long way because of my accent or because I may not know better since I don't drive. I hope it is the first one.

I had a very interesting taxi driver yesterday. He had little model cars (a lot like toy cars) all over the dash board of the car. He then had a driver's prayer thing posted near the steering wheel. He drove so slowly that I was afraid he was going to cause an accident! He also kept putting on the emergency break and shifting into neutral when we were stopped even though he drove an automatic. As a tangent, why do people use their emergency brake so much here? If you are driving a manual transmission car, isn't that what the clutch and neutral are for?

I also had another interesting taxi driver recently. He told me that he used to be a lawyer. We talked about a few things and seemed very smart and was an interesting guy. I wondered what made him stop being a lawyer and start being a taxi driver. I think I would rather be a taxi driver, though. I had another taxi driver a while back who kept complaining how lazy his wife and son were. He kept telling me how he had to go to the shops down the street multiple times a day for them (they were too lazy to do it themselves) and had to run errands for her even though she wasn't working and he was. There was also a guy who was a semi-professional photographer so we chatted about photography a bit.

Overall, I have had some very interesting conversations about life in Ireland, life in the States, politics, and real estate here. I like it when the taxi drivers talk to me and we have interesting conversation. I also like it when they take the fastest and cheapest route to go places and listen to me when I tell them where I want to go. Another really nice thing about a lot of taxi drivers is that they will round the fare. So, I have had fares that the meter said were 9.60 and they round down to 9.50. I have never had anyone round up.