Have you ever missed your bus and stayed in the hurry waiting for any opportunity how to move on quickly? There is only one chance without your own car.

Peter Klimáček is a taxi driver in Trnava, one of dozens of professional drivers working for the five taxi companies in Trnava. But only a few has international experience like him. He rode the roads of Plymouth and southwestern England.

“The most interesting experience was in Great Britain,” says Klimáček, who has worked as a taxi driver for 33 years. “Many English taxi agencies give a free training for being a taxi driver in UK, if you sign that you’ll be working for them at least two years.“

During his career in the “taxi life,” Klimáček has driven nine different cabs and given lifts to thousands of people in many countries of Europe.

“I learned how to say ´hello´ in about 20 languages,” he says. “It is a great opportunity to meet a lot of people from abroad and lose your prejudice of different races and religions. I know one person cannot show the view of the whole nation, but sometimes is quite interesting to see that people from any country have the same problems – children, money, health…”

Klimáček started driving his own taxi when he was 20. “My dream came true, because at that time it was a problem to buy a car,” he says. “You waited on the list to get one for more than one year. In 1975, I bought a Skoda 100 from my uncle, who was emigrated to America.”

Klimáček’s motivation was to find a job that was not so common. On the other hand, driving was his great passion. “I drove for the first time when I was about 10 – my grandfather’s tractor,” he says.

But taxi-driving in independent Slovakia became costly.

“A few years ago, it was much easier to have your own taxi cab, an open license and just drive,” says Steven Borovsky, Klimáček’s present employer. “The price of petrol was about 25 sk/liter {0, 83€}. Legislation was more liberal and taxi drivers were on one board because they were more small entrepreneurs with one or two cars. Now they need to work for bigger companies because of lower prices for service. There are two bigger taxi companies in Trnava at the moment. They started to push prices down.”

This was one of the reasons why Klimáček and his friend, Karol Kandrik, decided to go to Britain. “Being a taxi driver in the UK is not easy, because you are driving on the other side of the road,” he says. “Sometimes you can get lost in thoughts and you do not focus on the road. It can be quite dangerous, because you can lose your right line very quickly and be confused. The second big difference is that cities are more cosmopolitan in the UK. I was counting how many nationalities I had in my car. In the two years that I worked there, I counted 54. It was from all over the world, from Jamaica to Japan.”

Peter was working in southwestern England. The interesting thing is that he says he never had a car accident. “I think it is because I have a lot of experience in driving, and I am a kind of careful driver,” he says. “I am trying to predict the situation on the road, and it is useful to know how the weather is that day and listen to the service for drivers in radio.”

Only once he had to drive very fast, because he had a pregnant woman in back who was going directly to hospital to give a birth. “When I’m looking back, it was a funny situation because that was the only time that I paid a fee for driving fast and that woman was the only client that didn’t pay for my service,” he says with a smile.

On the question if he can compare Slovak and English drivers he answers: “Slovaks are really bad, disregardful of others, and arrogant. Especially Bratislava’s drivers. You know, if you are driving in west of Europe, there are speed cameras all over the country. And policemen are stricter. The average fee in UK was about 70 pounds, which is really a lot, so you are trying your best to drive carefully.”

Borovsky, director of the company where Klimáček now works, agree that he’s a good driver. “We know each other for a long time and I was one of many people that were discouraging him not to go abroad,” says Borovsky. “The taxi business could be a good opportunity for him to run his own company at that time. But he decided to go, and I had no problem taking him back when he returned.”

Klimáček says it was a good opportunity, but lack of money wasn’t the only issue. “I realized it is better for me to work as an employee, because I do not have to care about the taxi business, customer and administration,” he says. “I hate paperwork. I always get mad when I am doing something like that.”

Now 53, Klimáček lives with his wife, Monika, in Trnava. He has two sons and five grandchildren. “Our sons have a good connection with cars,” says Monika. “They know how to repair them when something happen and are great drivers. But Peter’s car is his sanctuary. Nobody can take care, wash or repair his car. It was hard for Peter when our oldest son became a driver. Even when he taught him how to drive carefully, he was still not quite sure to lend him his car.”

However, Peter and Monika note that neither son wants the job of taxi driver. They prefer to stay with their families all the time. “Our son’s wife Andrea was pregnant when Peter was in England, so his grandchild was on the way,” says Monika. “It was a hard time for him because he missed the time when the whole family was together. I suppose that this was the time when we started to get on better. It made our love much deeper and we started to appreciate more all the moments together.”