Dresden. holiday moody Empty at the crossroads in front of Nick’s nose. He looks down at Alonstrass and Lewis. Nothing. no car. for minutes. “Dresden is very relaxing,” says the taxi driver. “especially at night.”
But now it is afternoon and Nick is asleep. His bicycle is on the table in front of the cafe. To them, this is the first difference that comes to mind between German and British: some meet for coffee, others for beer.
In the distance, off to rest! Our top trips of the week on schsische.de!
The Englishman has lived in Dresden for 25 years and does not like coffee as much as beer. But he speaks good German and knows all the answers one should be able to give in order to gain German citizenship. Nick Davis has owned both, one by birth and the other for almost two years.
cook, construction worker, taxi driver
Once a friend gave him the idea to go to Germany in search of work. After his first training in gastronomy and a few years as a cook and employee of various hotels, he had the opportunity to work in the village as a construction worker. “I paved the walls and later completed further training as a plasterer,” he says.
Somebody will say brick maker here. He enjoyed the job and let it stay until the order situation worsened and he found better jobs in Hamburg, Heidelberg and Stuttgart. A new construction site finally brought them to Dresden. The construction boom of the early and mid-1990s, especially in the new federal states, provided him with a solid income for himself and the family he soon established.
Brexit puts pressure on Davis
While Nick connected well with his mother tongue in the west of Germany, he had a hard time in the east. So he learned German, initially on his own, later professionally to the level of B1. That is also one of the prerequisites for becoming officially German.
For Nick Davis, the decision was part of his path from impending Brexit to the latest. “A lot of things would be really complicated otherwise,” he says. Since the United Kingdom has left the European Union, it will require a visa to travel to the Czech Republic and Austria. “When things got serious, the embassy held an information program in Dresden. We were advised to apply for German citizenship.”
By this time he had long left the construction business. Major investments and renovations in this country were temporarily put off, and Nick moved to Holland for two years with his girlfriend at the time and their two daughters. “But there wasn’t even that much built up. So we decided to go back to Dresden.”
Nick Davis is a bit back at his first job. Though he no longer cooks or entertains anyone, the 54-year-old brings guests from A to B from dusk until dawn. After a brief period as a driver, back in Dresden, he switched to yellow taxis as a driver in 2013 and is, as far as I know, the only English taxi driver in Dresden – a job he says Is: “There’s nothing better for me than this!”
Nick discovers his passion after he decides to save himself from stressful day trips with hurried business travelers and annoying traffic jams. “People are in a good mood in the evening because they want to go to a party, restaurant, cinema or theatre. At night they come from their schedule in a good mood and want to go to bed.” Accordingly, they are on it. What else does he want?
“People just want to take the pig out”
“I can immediately see what my passengers need,” says Nick—sometimes a quiet, quick route home, but mostly a party until the wheels are rolling. “Then I turn the music in the car to 300 and the party goes on.” He can tell a lot of funny stories from his nocturnal tours: of the returnees who ask him to take another lap around the block because they don’t want to stop partying. And those who danced to the beat of the music so much that the car shook and the police officers passing by watched closely.
The long lockdown was tough for Nick Davis as well. Hardly anything can be done in a short amount of time. It’s happening even more now: “People just want to take the pig out. Every Friday and Saturday is now New Year’s Eve.” Nick also notices this in the neurological points of view in New Town. Eighty-one is a scary thing for him, he says. If possible, he does not accept a tour of the kettle scene.
There is hardly any reason to be afraid. “The taxi office works great, I feel safe in their mediation.” But he always had to cross the crossroads at Neustadt, and that was too dangerous for him. “If something happens, I’ll just be in trouble” – in life and limb or in the car. He likes to protect himself.
“Du clinst so sexy!”
He loves to drive atmospheric guests through the city, or even super tours to Dortmund, for example. “It’s been the longest ride I’ve ever had.” However, the smallest was so small that the taximeter jumped from 3.90 euros to 4.60 euros for the trip. “They were big guys. They came from the hairdresser.”
At the end of the day, he remembered an anecdote: Not everyone can pronounce their pronunciation correctly. Many consider him to be a Dutchman. “But when travelers find out I’m from England, men want to talk about football and women say to me: You look so sexy!” He once told this to a very old traveller as well. He replied angrily: “You don’t sound Saxon at all!”