Eureka!

Taxi Drivers, the 4th Tribe

It was June 1976, and since the beginning of January, Fernando had been living at Casa do Brasil (a student residence) on the campus of the Complutense University in Moncloa, Madrid, while taking a postgraduate course. Around March, Laís, a young official from Brazil’s Federal Revenue Service, also arrived to stay there while doing a customs course in a collaboration with the Spanish customs agency. I also lived there at the time, where I met both of them.

A common topic of conversation was how to make the most of the stay in Europe, visiting other countries and cultures. One of the obvious strategies was to take advantage of the school vacation period, roughly from July 1 to September 30, with everyone trying to take time off in August. Therefore, in August, no one thought about traveling.

The few Brazilians studying in Spain had a similar socio-cultural profile and were looking for travel partners to share expenses and company. Traveling back then wasn’t cheap or as easy as it is today, 40 years later. Also, if you bought a round-trip plane ticket for more than three months, you paid what was called the “full fare,” which, although more expensive, allowed for about eight stopovers. So, people often bought tickets to the farthest destinations possible, since the price was almost the same, and then arranged the layovers. The most common destination was Greece.

Fernando had a fixed idea: to visit a country behind the "Iron Curtain" to experience real communism. At the time, this was very difficult, as Brazil did not have diplomatic relations with most of those countries (if it had relations with any). Therefore, there was no way to obtain a "travel visa" for these places in Brazil; it had to be done abroad. On top of that, if you returned with a stamp in your passport showing that you had been behind the "Iron Curtain," you were likely to undergo an interrogation, at the very least.

Spain was an interesting country, emerging from 40 years of Francoist-falangist dictatorship (Franco died between Christmas and New Year's Day in 1975), anti-socialist and anti-communist, yet tolerant of countries behind the Iron Curtain and overtly antagonistic toward both Americans and Russians (in this, it made a good pair with French General De Gaulle). Spain also had censorship, but only for mass audiovisual media (radio, TV, films, and daily newspapers). In bookstores and record shops, anything was allowed.

Madrid had almost all the consulates, perhaps with the exception of Russia, due to the story of the "gold of Moscow" (*01). Taking advantage of this, Fernando had already gathered all the information and decided to go visit Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia (at that time a single country), which seemed to him to be the place that best combined all the political, cultural, and philosophical elements he sought. He already knew that the consulates of those countries, aware of the difficulties faced by Brazilians, issued visas on a loose sheet of paper stapled into the passport: once it lost its use, you ripped it out and threw it away—no trace left! Customs at both entry and exit also stamped the paper. Other attractions included the excitement of the forbidden, the illegal, the transgression! And without being immoral or unethical. These “spy-like” procedures, the conversations in hushed tones, who else would be there in the bar of Casa do Brasil, listening and eavesdropping? Could be an informant! A James Bond, a Mata Hari!

Partnerships formed somewhat by chance. It was already May when each of them realized they hadn’t yet decided what to do for the upcoming holidays.

After some back-and-forth, and running out of better options, Laís and Fernando agreed to travel together. They planned their itinerary around the idea of visiting Prague: Madrid – Rome (with Pompeii and Capri) – Athens (with Aegina) – Vienna – Prague – Berlin – Paris – Madrid, spending 3 to 5 days in each city. Like almost everyone at Casa do Brasil that year, they started their journey on May 31.

I met Fernando several times, the last being in 2016, when he told me more details of that trip. What caught my attention was the story of the taxi driver in Prague. And the anthropological conclusion, let's say, that the duo came to from it. For now, let's skip ahead to their departure from Vienna.

From Vienna, they flew to Prague on a Tupolev (Russian) plane. Have you ever flown on a Tupolev? Military-style: bare-bones, spartan (I flew on one in Cuba in 1994). They landed around noon. Neither spoke Czech (nor Slovak), and the locals didn’t speak Portuguese, Spanish, or English. They exited the plane and followed the other passengers into the middle of a terminal. It wasn’t beautiful, nor ugly, nor large, nor small; in a way, it reminded them of the terminal at São Paulo’s Congonhas Airport when it’s empty, that is, nearly deserted.

Everyone was smoking (it was the norm at the time), eyeing each other and smiling. The luggage arrived on rolling platforms, and the two of them went to pick up their bags (each with a small suitcase). Then a local appeared, dressed in something resembling a uniform (cap and jacket), and took their bags. They followed him, assuming he was a customs official. Fernando teased Laís: “Your colleague!”

When they realized it, they were in a taxi (deduction, since it was labeled in Czech). Laís jokingly said to Fernando: “Eureka!” It was because Fernando boasted about having figured out how to read some Greek words back in Greece, thanks to his knowledge of the Greek alphabet from mathematics: ΠΑΠΑΔΩΥΛΩΣ was Papadopoulos, and ЕΣΩΔΩΣ was “exodus” (every restaurant had a sign with an arrow and that “hieroglyph”). And he would say "Eureka!" with every new discovery. Now, Laís mocked him: “No 'Eureka' now? Can’t you read?”

But, as the saying goes, if you’ve been to Rome, you can go to Prague too: with a makeshift “Esperanto” or “papeamiento” and mime, the taxi driver managed to convince them to take a tour of Prague before dropping them off at their hotel (which had been reserved in Madrid, as a condition for getting the visa).

Prague was a city that seemed almost devoid of people, with only a few scattered here and there, and it was all in shades of gray (it still is). I think, even with a mischievous smile, Fernando told this without reference to the recent (2015) erotic film Fifty Shades of Grey, but who knows? After all, they had left Madrid practically as strangers, and by the end of the trip, they had returned with a different outlook and had since traveled together several times.

Back to the taxi. After touring the city for a while, they noticed a number of women dressed in black, which caught their attention. They understood that these were people who rented out rooms in their homes or functioned as boarding houses for travelers. They all looked like elderly peasant women from Europe, in that typical black clothing. Fernando didn’t say anything, but he thought: Eureka! Now, I’m going to experience real communism from the inside.

“Laís, look at this opportunity! Let’s stay with one of these women and really experience communism! What an interesting experience!”

He began to engage in conversation with the driver as the interpreter, using a mix of languages and gestures. Things were going well when, suddenly, Laís realized the problem they were getting themselves into and “freaked out”:

“Pó pará cuesse trem” (a phrase in the native dialect of southern Minas Gerais). “Pó pará! I’m a public servant, I can’t be here, clandestinely, like this, but everything has its limits... let’s go to the hotel immediately!”

Everyone understood “go to the hotel immediately,” including the taxi driver and the woman in black who had won the bid. There were no counterarguments, and they silently headed to the hotel. They arrived and checked in at the Grand Hotel in Prague (which still exists, though remodeled; I visited recently). At the time (before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989), it felt as if all the hotels in communist countries had been built before the political system had taken hold. Anyone who’s been to a communist country will understand: uniformed staff doing nothing, a certain air of pompous decay.

Their basic English helped them communicate. Reservation confirmed, they were asked for their passports. The reception clerk began filling out the registration form. At one point, he asked: “Did you arrive by plane?”

“Yes!”

“Where is the entry stamp from immigration at the airport?”

“What do you mean? No one asked us anything, we just left, took a taxi, and here we are.”

“Yes, but the plane arrived three or four hours ago…”

“We did a city tour…”

The staff paused, looking suspicious, and then a more senior employee, with a stern face, approached and… called the police!!!

After more than half an hour of questioning by the police, a type of secret service or political police, three phone calls (rotary phones), and several radio communications between the officers, who were probably talking to superiors, using the word “Brazilian” (or something similar) frequently, the duo was released, not without a scolding/threat, at least that’s what they understood.

They settled into their excellent apartment (there were hardly any tourists in Prague at the time), took a shower, and it was time for dinner. Tired, but mostly cautious and worried, they decided to eat at the hotel. Before dinner, some vodka shots to relax. Between toasts, they came up with this anthropological gem:

“Eureka, there aren’t three human races, there are four: yellow, black, white, and taxi drivers (*02).”

Indeed, taxi drivers around the world have something in common. Maybe it's a piece of their DNA. Whether it's in the good or the bad, there’s something they all share. This could make for a great thesis in any science field that studies the subject.

In behavioral psychology: are taxi drivers "like that" because they’re taxi drivers? Or are they taxi drivers because they’re “like that?”

There’s also what we might call the “taxi driver syndrome,” which shows up in many people as well:

Syndrome type one is for people who can’t stand being told what to do or who refuse to give orders. I’m sure the reader knows many people with this syndrome, even if they aren’t taxi drivers.

Syndrome type two is for people who believe they know how to solve the world’s problems. There are variants of this, too, like barbers and, they say, manicurists. Clearly, you’ve already thought that it also strongly manifests in economists and managers, and in these people, it spreads contagiously (spreading even to journalists), and it’s dangerous, as it affects millions, not just passengers in a vehicle or in the barber’s chair.

I’ve met taxi drivers on four continents, and in my opinion, they are indeed a “race” apart. There are fat ones, thin ones, tall ones, short ones, men, women, old ones, young ones, good ones, and bad ones, but they all have something in common in their minds and ways. Before writing this chronicle, I spoke to friends, and nearly all of them agreed with this thesis. There was a well-traveled friend (Dr. X) who thinks it’s only airport taxi drivers, but she said she’s reconsidering and might agree with the thesis I’ve laid out here.

Well, I’ll stop here because I’m itching to add a fifth “race,” accountants.

In other chronicles, I’ll record more of what I was told about this interesting trip.

(*01) Toward the end of the Spanish Civil War, when defeat was near, the so-called “Republicans” reportedly transferred Spain’s gold reserves to Moscow, claiming it was to prevent the "Falange" from taking control of the state. What exactly happened remains unclear, with much controversy. Russia claims it received only part of what is said to have been sent, compensating for some of its wartime supplies, and promised to return the rest when the Republic returned to Spain. In any case, the gold disappeared.

(*02) For those who claim to be politically correct, which may just be because of the vocabulary, I ask that when reading the word “race,” feel free to substitute whatever term you prefer. I considered writing “tribe,” but that would have been just to please these patrols, so I decided to write it as it was and how things stand. Note that at the time, this is how ethnic groups were identified, and in my case, there is no prejudice involved.

Miguel Fernández y Fernández,Consulting engineer and columnist, March 2023