Part 8: Russian Taxis

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Russia has an amazing taxi system; stand on the side of the road and stick your arm out, and someone will pick you up.
I kid you not.
The car will be a square item from another time, but the fair will be cheap. What's scary is I've seen young girls doing this. Maybe I've watched too many horror films, but if a beautiful person climbs in a vehicle with an odd-faced character wearing driving gloves (be prepared for that) their odds of showing up on the back of a milk carton are fairly high.

If gambling isn't your thing, there's a taxi service called City Mobile. The App can be downloaded to your phone and you can order a taxi to your door. You can even track the progress of your taxi on his way to you.
While this sounds too good to be true it's because it is; I've ordered one or two taxis where I can see the person accepting to drive me is far away, he clearly accepted the order to be a greedy little cabby. This means, if I've been monitoring his progress, that I have to order another, wasting my time.
Next problem; for some reason you're car driver likes to call you. Why? You have the pickup destination with an alert sent to your phone that says he's arrived. Why would I want to talk to you? What do we have to discuss? You know where to find me and you know where I'm going.
Especially if you don't speak Russian, it can get tiresome to say the least when these characters call you to tell you they're 2 minutes away. Yes, I can see your car on the app, dumbass. It gets frustrating to a degree that you would rather walk 500 miles (queue the Proclaimers) in the snow then put up with this unnecessarily lost in translation mess.
Next is the cab fare. The app calculates an amount for you, so you'll know if you're getting ripped off.

The main bonus is cabs are still a damn sight cheaper than most major cities.

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