The Shared Taxi from Hell

So, I eventually extricated myself from Vladikavkaz. 

On Monday morning bright and early I packed my bags up and headed to the train station to catch the earliest possible ride back to Georgia. I found a taxi driver who offered to take me, but he said if we waited a bit, he could get some passengers coming off the train to share the taxi and the cost. 
 

the demon taxi itself

Everything went wrong...

• The train wasn't arriving for half an hour, so I decided to walk to a famous pirogi place. Unfortunately, when I got there, they had just opened and didn't have any pirogis ready, so I placed an order and returned to the taxi. The driver agreed to swing by and pick up my pirogis, but we were still waiting for more passengers...

• The first girl we picked up was big, dark hair teased up into a hair sprayed, plasticky cloud, 4-inch platform heels, and the screechiest voice imaginable. She basically screamed into her cell phone in Ossetian-Georgian the whole ride.

• Then an older woman joined us. Normal enough, but she indulged the first girl and soon they were screaming together, along with the driver. 

• I somehow got sandwiched into the back middle seat, between old screamer and our final passenger (who we picked up on route to the pirogi place, an hour and a half later)

• The enormous, sweaty guy squeezed in next to me has one really long pinky nail. I am going to vomit. He's wearing jorts, a wife beater, and a cross body man purse.

 best pirogi shop in Vladikavkaz

Everyone is speaking an unintelligible mix of Ossetian, Georgian, and Russian. I initially made my dissatisfaction quite clear- I yelled at the driver because we were much later than we were supposed to be, I was hungry and worried about losing my pirogi, I knew he was over-charging me (he barely lowered the price at all when we added 3 more people to the car), and I was extremely uncomfortable...so I put on my most angry, sour face, crossed my arms, and scowled for the entirety of the ride, so for once no one talked to me...


So, no one knew I was American.
Joke's on those jerks when they found out that meant an extra hour at the border crossing hahahahahahahahahaaaha f*ck those guys.
Read the story of my FSB interrogation here!

Eventually we made it to Kazbegi. I didn't pay the taxi driver the full amount because he was a total jerk, I refused to be over-charged by that obscene amount, and I visibly saw the other passengers pay less. 

At least I got my pirogi.

mmmm tsaharadjin