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The Chinese have an ancient saying; ‘a journey of a thousand miles starts with one footstep.’ Not being Chinese, my experience is that nearly every journey, regardless of distance, seems to start with a taxi ride to Cork airport. And each of those same journeys ends with another taxi ride into the touchdown city at the other end. I’ve probably picked up taxis in some thirty or so countries over the past few years. Whistled up and flagged down cabs from Australia to Venezuela, via Iran, Cuba and plenty of other places in between. Bundled my bags, riding boots and hats into every kind of horseless-carriage from beat-up VW Beetles through to fresh-minted Mercedes. Discussed and argued destinations and prices in half a dozen languages.

And the strange thing is – whatever their language, whatever their car, and wherever the country, taxi drivers are all the same. They’re all still, in essence, 19th century horsemen, - grumpy, opinionated Dickensian whips - unchanged in what they do for a living or in their outlook on the world since the days of the nag and hansom cab.

In Vienna, horse drawn carriages, fiakers, still ply for hire in the city’s centre, continuing a history that goes back to the mid 17th century and making them one of the oldest organised taxi systems in Europe. To delve deeper into the ‘taxi driver as horseman’ story I visited the Viennese fiaker museum in Veronikagasse. Though not an easy place to find, the museum was worth the pilgrimage. Especially when a very little additional research threw up an Irish dimension to the story.

The horse-drawn fiakersunion’s offices are housed, alongside the Viennese motorized taxi union’s regulatory body, in the same building that has been their headquarters for two centuries, and thus they are still a part of the city’s modern taxi system. Cars may have been used as A-to-B hire transport in the city since before the Second World War, but the fiakershave remained too, finding a new life in taking tourists around the centre of the city.

“Our fiakers are like the gondolas in Venice,” I was told by the union’s fachgruppengeschäftsführer, Dr Andreas Curda, as he unlocked the door to the small museum on the top floor, “the only way, the traditional way, to appreciate the city’s architecture, to get a feel for what Vienna was like at the height of its glory. They’re a symbol of Vienna.”

The first licences for vehicles plying for hire in Vienna were issued in the reign of Leopold I, the first ‘Baroque Emperor’ who ruled from 1658 to 1705. “This came with the establishment of the middle classes – private coaches were for the upper classes, and the new middle classes couldn’t afford stables and coachmen and so they wanted to hire them. And it grew from that through the centuries to what we have today.”

Though in modern Vienna only vehicles pulled by pairs can be licenced, in the past both single and pair turnouts were available for hire. “It was exactly like the difference between minicabs and taxis today, because the single horse vehicles, genossenshraftdereinspanner could only take passengers when they were called up, whilst the two horse carriages, fiakers, could stand near hotels and churches waiting for passengers.” In those early days the single turnout whips wore bowler hats, whilst the fiaker drivers wore beaver top hats, though in modern times the bowlers, along with suits and ties, have been adopted by the fiakers’ whips.

The carriages had rugs and, for the cold winters of Central Europe, small charcoal foot stoves, examples of which were displayed in one corner of the museum. Herr Curda pointed out another exhibit underlining the connection with modern taxis; “a meter from the late 19th century which was fixed onto a fiaker and connected to the wheel to measure distance and calculate the fare.” Which, presumably dates, roughly anyway, the first instances that the well-known phrase, ‘oh, sorry, mate, but the meter’s not working,’ was used.

Today, the offices below the small museum are still responsible for testing the fiaker drivers on horsemanship, and for licensing vehicles and horses for safety. The union also tests the whips on the ‘knowledge,’ though, unlike drivers of motor taxis, this is measured in fluency in one or two foreign languages, and an ability to tour guide around the historic city centre rather than take short cuts down alleys and find obscure side streets in far-flung suburbs.

Rules are tight for fiakers. Only four types of vehicle are authorized for use; Victorias, ‘glass’ landaus, hooded landaus and Vis-à-vis. “Some are antique, with a few of the carriages being more than 100 years old, but many of the 148 licenced vehicles are new-built from the Czech Republic or from Hungary where they are made to the old plans.” Herr Curda shook his head at this. “The new built are cheaper, but the drivers don’t like them so much. The tourists, though, don’t know the difference, and so the market is in the cheaper ones. That’s the way it is.”

The supply of horses, too, draws on the historic ties with the lands of the Old Austro-Hungarian Empire. “The horses mainly come from Hungary, just as in the time of Franz Josef there were great horse breeding areas near Budapest or on the plains that supplied Vienna. Horses used here in the city must be hot or warm blooded horses,” he made it sound obvious that a capital city would have the best of horseflesh. In fact most of the horses imported from Hungary start their careers on Vienna’s trotting track and those that don’t have the speed are sold on and rebroken for carriage use.

Harness is always breast collar, and nearly always made in Hungary where workmanship is high and costs are lower. Where in the past the owners had their crests on blinkers and pads, today decoration is more restrained and harness is classic ‘town’ black and silver. In fact life for a fiaker whip nowadays, is a quiet occupation as I’d seen in the centre where the carriages lined up on the Heldenplatz in front of the Imperial Palace waiting for fares. A bit of trotting around the ‘first district’ and pointing out the Spanish Riding School, and places where scenes from the Third Man were shot and so forth. Putting on nosebags, pulling off rugs, polishing a leather dashboard here or a bit of brass there.

But some of the museum exhibits seemed to show a more racy past, when whips would gather in small cafes to drink rum coffee and smoke their traditional Virginia cigars and when they were part of a powerful elite amongst the working men of Vienna, and dressed like dandies to prove it. The fiaker ball held yearly was one of the most dashing of the balls, though today has been superceded by the ‘Taxi ball’ which has less of a ring to it. A number of ecstatically shocked newspaper articles in the museum wrote about ‘fiaker Milli,’ the wife of a fiaker owner, but girlfriend to a number more, who not only smoked but also ‘liked to wear trousers.’ The world of taxis and their horses in 19th century Vienna was a rich and exciting counterpoint to the more formal world of dances, politics and family life that bounded the lives of the wealthy citizens, and there was an attraction between the two.

The relationship between the upper classes and the fiaker owners and whips of Vienna was cemented by a particular and tragic incident in Austria’s history when the son of Franz Josef I, Crown Prince Rudolf, and his wife died in mysterious circumstances. A coachman, Herr Bratfisch, had driven them out of the city to Meyerling. Witnessed by nobody but Bratfisch there was a murder or a suicide or a combination of the two that left both of the royal couple dead. The Emperor gave Bratfisch a large amount of money and a fiaker license to never speak of the incident. “He was a man of honour, and he never spoke and nobody knows what happened. Nor, I suppose, they ever will.”

After these affairs of state, it seemed a bit of a comedown that Andreas Curda was currently dealing with something a little more down to earth. Though the City of Vienna was only too aware of the publicity value of the fiakers, and their role in tourism, there was a war being fought with residents of the First District. Herr Curda fought an internal battle between delicacy and vocabulary to clarify the problem. “There is a problem because the people don’t like to…ah…ummm…no they don’t like to…yes, smell… they don’t like to smell the horse…oh, excrement, poo, yes, horse poo.” He breathed more easily with the word out. “Yes, we have a real fight now about whether the fiaker owners have to pay to clean the streets in the night or whether they have to have ‘poo bags’ on the backsides of their horses.”

The idea of horse nappies obviously appalled him; “The owners don’t like this because it doesn’t look right, but maybe, if we don’t win the battle, in some years the ‘poo bag’ will be the thing that all owners will use.” Even the idea seemed a comedown from the glory days of Vienna’s taxis.

As I left he brightened up when I asked him where the name fiaker came from. “Ah in the time of Franz Josef, French was the language spoke by the upper classes, and so the name came from the Parisian fiacres, which were called after a taxi stand established to take customers from the Hotel of St Fiacre.

And the Irish connection with Vienna’s horse drawn taxis? Well, the Hotel of St Fiacre was named after the nearby church dedicated to the 7th century Irish hermit, Saint Fiacre, who had settled in France and established a monastery in Breuil. So, the Viennese fiakerswere name after an Irishman. And Herr Curda added, “the fiakershave two patron saints – St Leonard who is the saint of horses and cows, and Saint Fiacre.

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