There were two empty seats on Delta flight 11 this morning. I wonder what happened to them, if someone was able to stretch out and sleep all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, if a couple of students riding standby snatched them up for forty euros a piece, or if they remained empty all the way from London to Atlanta.
I was supposed to be sitting in seat 43F today, but instead, I found myself sitting in the front seat of a Swedish taxi car. After getting really turned around in a new area of Stockholm, I tapped on the window of an idle taxi. The driver waved me in eagerly. “Nej, nej,” I said. “En fråga.” A question. That’s all I had.
His English was decent though. I told him where I was trying to go, and he explained that the road was under construction, that there was really no good way to walk there. “Please let me drive you,” he said, refusing to take no for an answer. “For free today. Just please.” I folded myself into the passenger seat.
We talked of many things in that short ride. “Where are you from?” is always the first question, and I told him Atlanta. He wanted to know why I didn’t have a southern accent, then did his best impression, which involved dropping one side of his mouth all the way to his jaw and producing a horrendous wail. Maybe it was his long bushy hair that gave me the impression of a lion. He must’ve gleaned that idea from movies, but I didn’t say anything about that. I said that my accent faded when I began learning other languages, especially Hungarian because you really have loosen every muscle in your face to speak Hungarian. It comes out occasionally, though, especially if I’m drunk or tired.
That put us on the topic of languages. He asked what I thought of Swedish. “Its not bad,” I said. “Knowing some Danish really helps, and I think its actually easier than Danish.”
Well that really set him off. “Denmark? Oh, the Danes!” He scrunched up his face, pounded his fist on the steering wheel, and let out a toneless slur of noise that was several decibels higher than his voice. “Oh, the Danes,” he said when he was done. “They need to spit out their porridge and say something with words.”
Its the Viking complex. It lingers, I think.
Then he asked me if I’d ever met Obama. Never, I said. But I voted for him. He seemed to like that, his face brightened a bit.
What do you do?” he asked next, but before I finished my four-syllable response, he began talking. “See, I’m a taxi driver for the past two years, but before I was a taxi driver, I was a painter.” “Oh really, what did you paint?” “Anything!” he said. “Anything like… like nature?” I asked, waving my hand up across windshield. He seemed confused. “I painted anything. Walls, doors, cabinets, floors.” “Oh, okay,” I said. “I thought you meant a painter who makes art.” “No, no,” he was grimacing. “Not art.”
He told me that he liked painting and misses it sometimes. But he likes being a taxi driver too. Did I know that this is the best taxi company in the world? No, I didn’t know that. He couldn’t remember who had said it, maybe it was Newsweek. It was definitely somebody big who said that this was the best taxi company in the world. “So now you can tell everybody that you have ridden in the world’s best taxi!” he beamed and told me to take a company card. I agreed and reached for a card, but the slot was empty.
He pulled into my neighborhood. I gathered my things and thanked him profusely. “Nej, I like helping people sometimes,” he said. “I don’t try to help very often, but when I do, I like it.” I promised to help someone else in return for his kindness. “That’s better than money,” he said, smiling big. I forgot to mention that he smiled a lot. A very animated gentleman. I never got his name, or the taxi company he works for.
But instead of occupying seat 43F, which cost me five hundred dollars and was only a back-up plan that I had to make 5 months ago to the day, I was in the front seat of a Swedish taxi - the world’s best taxi company according to someone - with a painter from Stockholm who drove me all the way home and did not charge me a single penny.
4 notes