I have an Argentine writer friend who once made a brilliant observation about the cabbies of Buenos Aires being the new gauchos. After riding from Brandenburg Gate to Wilmersdorf in Roland's cab, I realized that the new gauchos are not confined to Buenos Aires.
One of my favorite things to do when I’m traveling in a new city is read guidebooks about the city I'm living in. Thanks to my Berlin landlord's Fodor's NY guide, I learned: "Taxi drivers are notorious for (a) knowing nothing about NY geography, (b) not speaking English (c) having an improvisational driving style."
No matter how many taxi adventures I've done, I still get the same jitters as when I did it the first time. Here's some video of the lead-up, the approach, and my initial negotiations with Ergan, the driver of my latest adventure who's been a Berlin cabbie for seven years.
"My English is not so good," Ergan said when I opened the door to his cab. "Your English is better than my German," I said. The taxi driver laughed. We were on our way.
When one of my new German friends told me that he has a friend who’s spent the past year searching for the best döner kebab in Berlin, I had an idea: why not invite the kebab seeker on a taxi adventure and ask the cabbie to take us to *his* favorite spot for döner?
My three German co-adventurers and I had no idea that our taxi driver had steered us to the birthplace of döner kebab when he dropped us off at Hasir Restaurant in Kreuzberg last week - nor that Anthony Bourdain had also tasted the lamb there when he visited Berlin.
