Taxi Story - the Serb

That tattoo? That! I think I made a mistake with that. No, it is not the Great Wall of China. When I hold it out you can see it is a castle (on his inner forearm). It is an old crumbling castle near where I was born. I was born in Serbia, can't you tell from my accent? No, probably not, we all sound the same from that part of the world. Even after eleven years here and being a "dinky di" Aussie. OK, maybe I am not yet a "dinky di" Aussie (laughs) but I want my two children to be. I want them to grow up in a place where there is no hate, where neighbours can be neighbours. The trouble with where I was born is that there is more than 400 years of hate and it is hard to live with love in a place that is so infested with hate. So I came here.

I had a girl in my cab recently who admired the colours of my tattoo. She liked all the green shrubbery around the castle walls. It is still fresh and bright since I have only had it for a year. On the soft skin of my arm it was painful to have done. But this girl pulled up her dress and showed me a beautiful angel (pronounced "anne-gel") tattooed up the side of her body from her hips, up over her waist onto her ribs. But it was half finished because she was skinny and the tattoo was too painful to complete on her ribs. You see some strange things in the cabs. But this an-gel was beautiful, even if it was not finished. But I am still not sure if my castle tattoo was a mistake. At least it was not as painful as if I had had it tattooed on my ribs. (Shakes his head as he remembers, or imagines).