The maxi taxi.

Today, for those of you who have never had the opportunity to experience one for yourself, I am going to introduce you to the maxi taxi.  It's a daily fixture of our life in Romania, so I figured it deserved a mention here.

In Târgu Mureș, there are two options for public transit: the bus or the maxi.  Autobuzuri are like public buses in any large city in any country.  Maxi taxis, however, are different from anything I've seen in the States.  A maxi taxi is a large van -- think 15-passenger size -- that's been outfitted to seat 16 people and hold another 20 standing in the aisle.  They're not usually that full, but sometimes they are.  Oh, sometimes they are much more full.

For instance, once Jack and I rode the free maxi taxi to Auchan.  Typically it costs 2 lei per ride, which is the equivalent of about 60 cents in American dollars.  However, a few of the enormous international supermarket chains here have free maxi taxis for customers, which roam the city picking up anyone who wants a free ride to the outskirts of town, where these monolithic shopping malls are.  We had heard that you could buy tortillas at Auchan, and we were curious, so we got on.

Big mistake.  Notice how in the picture above, there are a few people sitting down, looking pleasantly out the window, and you only see one person standing with his or her rear squashed against the window?  That's nice.  But in some maxi taxis at some hours of the day -- and in the free maxi taxis at all hours of the day -- the vehicle is standing room only, so upon boarding you are suddenly face-to-face with a complete stranger who is only inches away, while another stranger is unfortunately smooshed between your rear and the window.  It's bearable while you're moving, because even the jerkiest of gear changes are softened by the mass of humanity swaying back and forth, all smushed together.  The American pop music on the radio, the smells of everyone's breath and laundry detergent... it's a unique, but not necessarily altogether unpleasant, experience.  But when someone has to get off at a stop, it's not so nice.  It seems inevitable that at least one of the people who needs to get down at each stop is standing in the far back of the maxi taxi, and you can only imagine the chaos of trying to make your way down the aisle and out the door of a 15-passenger van with 37 people in it.  Sometimes I think it would be easier if we'd just lift them up and crowd-surf them to the door, but I don't know how to offer that suggestion in Romanian yet.

Yet the thing which has interested me most about maxi taxis and the culture associated with them is the method of boarding.  Typically, when a maxi comes to a stop, the people who are exiting get off first and leave the door open for those boarding; the last person on then pulls the door shut behind them.  But just because the people getting on the maxi taxi wait for those getting off to step down doesn't mean they leave room for them to do so.  Romanians generally have a much smaller personal space "bubble" than Americans, so people stand closer together in line, when talking, in a crowd, and so on.  (Often I have been waiting at a store counter, thinking I am next, when a Romanian will cut right in front of me without realizing -- certainly not intending to be rude, but to them I didn't appear to be in line.)  This translates to maxi taxis too: exiting one is like pushing your way through a mob, since people rarely leave a path for the departing riders to walk through, instead crowding immediately to the door.  At Auchan, catching the maxi taxi back into the city was like being part of a swarm of pigeons swooping in to freshly-thrown bread crumbs.  (If you've never seen pigeons dive-bomb bread crumbs, it's astonishing.  Try it.)  Jack and I simply stood back in amazement and had to laugh to ourselves a bit -- but then, of course, we joined the throng and stood wrapped tightly in each other's arms among a swaying, sweaty, crowded mass of humanity, all the way back home.

I love riding the maxi.  I really, truly do.