During my recent trip to Eastern Europe, I got taken for a ride in a taxi (taksi in Lithuanian) that was more than I expected. Learn from my experience about how being prepared could have prevented my extended ride and how it helped me recover once I knew something was amiss.

The story begins after a business meeting in Vilnius. After a late lunch meeting, I decided to walk around Old Town before heading back to the apartment where I was staying at on the outskirts of town. My host arranged transport for my ride to the meeting, the taxi picked me up and dropped me off at my destination. Total cost was around $8.50 USD and it took about twelve minutes. However, I had to arrange my ride back because I did not know when my meeting was going to be over.

Well, easier said than done…

I initially tried to make a reservation using my mobile phone but had problems dialing from my US number to a local number. Frustrated, I just walked up to a taxi and gave the driver my destination address. He said “OK” in broken English and off we went.

The problem was, as we snaked through the narrow roads of Old Town, I noticed that we were heading in the opposite direction of where I needed to go. When we crossed a set of railroad tracks on the way to the Airport, I knew we were on the wrong site of the city. Finally, we stopped and I wrote down the address and gave it to him. The driver was relatively new and entered the wrong address in his GPS. So after he entered the correct one in, we started our journey across town towards my destination.

It wasn’t easy or fast because it was at the beginning of rush hour. Vilnius only has a limited number of highways so we were stuck on surface streets for most of the journey back. A ride that should have only taken around fifteen minutes became a forty-five minute ordeal. Finally, we arrived at the apartment complex and the bill was…$27 USD! The driver knew he made a mistake and took off the toll for the wrong initial destination but still. I paid and got out because I was thankful to arrive back where I was supposed to be.

There are a few lessons from all this that I wanted to share. First, the mistakes I made:

• Not knowing the language. Alas, I only know a few words of Lithuanian and most of the taxi drivers aren’t fluent in it. Communication was a problem, which is why I initially went in the wrong direction.
• I hadn’t tested my phone with local numbers. Initially, I relied upon using other people’s phones because the rates were cheaper and everything worked well. However, had I entered a taxi company into my phone and tested it beforehand, I wouldn’t have had a problem.
• Looking back, I could have had somebody at the restaurant make a reservation for me. Most of the staff spoke good English and could have easily arranged a cab. Being independent (read “stubborn”) though, I decided to do things my own way.

The good news is, I was prepared enough to rally and resolve the situation by doing the following:

• I knew where I was supposed to go and there was a landmark (the Vilnius TV Tower) I could refer to. Eventually, my driver understood where I was supposed to go when I pointed to the tower and repeated the name of the city district.
• I was alert and figured out we were going the wrong way fairly soon. You can trust locals to an extent but its always wise to be alert in case you feel something is wrong. Being observant and alert helped me know something was wrong fairly quickly.
• Even thought things started off bad, I worked with the driver to resolve the problem. I knew he was stressed and frustrated so I didn’t want to add to it by being a pain in the butt tourist. He volunteered to reduce my bill and I was happy to pay the bill. Being reasonable and kind helps.

So learn from me and avoid being taken for a ride. Everything ended up OK but it could have gone really wrong. A good part of wisdom is learning from other people’s mistakes, do yourself a favor and learn from mine.