Taken for a ride in Russia

“Souvenirs!” the cabbie declared, holding up a bag of Russian Matryoshka dolls.

Traffic was crawling along the streets of St. Petersburg, and our sturdy taxi driver with thick hands and a crew cut was not about to miss a chance to make a sale.

“Russian caviar!” he exclaimed, holding up a round jar for my wife’s approval. “The best! For you, ten dollars!”

As our driver held forth with his sales pitch, I stared out the taxi window at Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg, Russia’s pulsing commercial and entertainment district. The buildings are crowned with billboards for jeans and cellular telephone service. Sleek young Russians were strutting along the sidewalk like fashion models on a runway, as if moving to the beat of the re-mixed Elvis tune that was blaring from the taxi’s radio.

As we inched our way toward The Idiot, a café named for Dostoyevsky’s famous work, our affable driver tried to sell us everything from to Russian flag pins to Stalin’s mustache comb. The market is alive and well it seems - a wild-west economy in a city once proudly known as the cradle of the Bolshevik revolution.

We politely passed on the souvenirs, though our driver was not the least bit discouraged.

Suddenly a motorist crossed our path at an intersection. “Idiot!” our cabbie barked out the window, then turned to us with a broad smile, quite proud of the joke he’d made.

We cheered him as he navigated through the grid-locked intersection, then delivered us to the door of the café.

My wife tipped him generously, probably as much for his entertainment value as his driving skills.

“For you!” he said grandly, handing her the bag of apparently gently used Matryoshka dolls. With a jolly “Da svidanya!” he sped off happily in his dented taxi, in search of his next customer.

Written by Andy McDonald - BereaOnline.com Contributing Editor