I have a love-hate relationship with cab drivers. While behind the wheel myself, I find their driving mostly arrogant and obnoxious, yet sloppy and careless, and have recently started to add mock admiration – “Oh, sorry, you must be right since you’re the professional driver here” – to my litany of insults and honking when I try to put them in their place in traffic. Gently, but firmly.

That changes when I’m in the backseat myself. Now, I’m the kind of guy who knows exactly what Wife meant when she came back from a massage last week, glowing, and raving about the masseuse, who was “so good, and didn’t say a word.” I never chit chat with the masseur, either, and when I get my hair cut, once a year, or so, I try to fall asleep in the chair. (And succeed).

But I do like to speak with cab drivers.

Not always, and almost never on my way to the airport, on my way out. But almost always on my way away from the airport, into the country. That’s when these professional drivers also, in my mind, become fountains of knowledge. They’re my men on the ground, they know the vibes and the temperature of the city I’ve just come to. I get in the back seat, and cab driver becomes my trusted chauffeur, and with that, the assistant I never had. That must a part of the reason I like talking to cab drivers: I feel superior because I have a driver.

I start picking their brains for information. Where to go, what to do? Who’s hot, who’s not? What’s the weather going to be like, what’s the weather been like recently? Yes, this applies to Stockholm and Helsinki, too, even if I consider both my hometowns, but only upon returning home.

But that’s just the basics.

One driver, in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, gave me a short recap of the industrial evolution of the city, directing my attention towards a row of, according to him, empty factories in the horizon. He gave me his Top 5 list of things to see, and suggested I get up really early one morning to see the sunrise over the Atlantic. (I did, and it was worth it).

In Quebec City, my driver enlightened me about the dire economical status of the province, and then launched into his Top 5 list of things that the government had failed with. He also presented his own solution for tax reform.

In Toronto, my first chauffeur helped me get settled in the city by giving the name of what he considered the absolutely coolest spot to hit that night – Sneaky Dee’s – while my second driver, upon assessing the situation, thought it would be best to not take me there at all, due to the fact that according to his analysis, my appearances didn’t mix well with the regular crowd who were “black people”. Granted, I found this most surprising, considering that the driver was African Canadian himself – or maybe Caribbean Canadian – but after he agreed to drive past Sneaks, I saw that he meant goths.

There’s one topic that most taxi drivers seem to be particularly interested in. City planning.

A Helsinki driver once gave me a long presentation on how Helsinki downtown traffic should really be planned and directed. (Mostly without pedestrians). And granted, he had a point, because the presentation, graphs and all, took place in a car that stood still in front of the Swedish Theater, stuck in a traffic jam. I also had to admire his creative way of cussing, introducing me to a few words I had never heard.

In Finland, cab drivers have been a little bit special. They’ve always had nice uniforms – a leather jacket, suit pants – and the nicest cars. About a third of taxis are still Mercedes-Benzes, even if the share has gone down in the last two decades. Back in the 1960s, the number two was Volga, from the Soviet Union.

They had to know all the streets of Helsinki to get their license, and getting that red book of street names was the highest pinnacle of being a Helsinkian driver.

In the phone book, when there still were phone books, and when people still listed their professions – only if it added value to their personal brand, in today’s terms – taxi drivers would list theirs as “rental car chaffeur.”

These days, they all have GPS, of course, and the uniform rules don’t seem to be as strict anymore.

They’re losing touch. It’s almost as if they’re just driving a car. The next thing you know, they won’t even know what the inflation rate is.

Or worse, I just won’t believe a word they say.