Saturday, December 24, 2005

one in five

Usually when I arrive at the Gare du Lyon, I take the Metro to Marina’s, but with a suitcase full of heavy Christmas presents I splurged on a taxi. I have thought of doing a series of Taxi Driver stories starting from the driver in Berlin who sang Porgy and Bess songs to me, to my favorite Algerian driver in Puteaux who takes me to the airport from Marina’s place. He and I solve the problems brought on by the crazies from both our worlds in each trip.

This time the driver was a happy fellow who struggled under the weight of my suitcase. He had an accent I couldn’t identify in his French so I asked.

“I’m Greek,” he said and he turned out to be like the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding telling me all that was wonderful about his country. However, he was equally in love with France and his French wife.

He confided to me with a great sense of pride that among the 15,000 taxi drivers in France there were only five Greeks. I was lucky to get one of them.

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