EPTLet me shed some light on my career as a segway guide for the fine city that is my hometown.
I took this up a couple of months ago. I applied to some agency last year and already did some training with them. However, for some reason they ended up not having an opening for that season and so i was dropped. This year however, after applying to another agency, they called me up and wanted me to come by and introduce myself. Turns out they had a fairly good impression of my person, even though I was a little worried at first that my then long hair would sort of scare them off. You see the job application said something along the lines of: sporty, well-dressed, neat appearance.
I've had other jobs before. Supermarket, souvenir store, newspaper delivery, I still work part-time in a record store. Being a guide seemed pretty appealing to me. You get to talk all day long, crack crappy jokes and you're the center of attention for the entire duration of the tour. Seemed pretty darn good to me. On top of that the pay is usually pretty good too, not to mention the tips.
Berlin has seen a huge surge in tourism over the last couple of years so I thought to mysef why not profit from that for once? When I was younger they told me I could become anything...so I became...
...a Segway Guide!
Most of you have probably seen the hilarity that is the Segway, if not in person, then on video perhaps.
Yes, they're quite goofy-looking. My thoughts exactly when I saw them for the first time. It just seemed pretty embarassing to me to ride around on these weird contraptions. Trust me, there's stuff floating around the inner city of Berlin that is even more embarassing than a segway, namely the infamous beer-bar-bike, or those bikes where you sit in a circle and pedal the shit out of it.
However, people usually show a genuine interest in these things and I myself am having a lot of fun driving these even after many many tours. The season is coming to and end with autumn and winter drawing near but we've had a good turnout this year and this month alone I made around 800 Euro, not including tips and like I said I still work part-time in a record store. Im starting to think I might be well off for the winter.
So let me give you a quick run-down of how I conduct my tours.
I meet the guests( who have scheduled a tour via our website) at a meeting point near our garage where our segway fleet is stowed away. I then take them there and pull out the segways to a fairly open and traffic free space ( inner city of Berlin mind you). There I give them an introduction and show them the basics of segway driving. If anyone has ever ridden a segway before you can most likely confirm that it takes an average of 5-10 minutes to master that thing. After 15 minutes most people are confident enough to go with me on a tour even through heavy traffic. Its rather simple you see. Leaning forward means the thing goes forward. Leaning back makes it brake, leaning back even more causes backwards movement. Steering is done via the handle. Its childs play.
I then proceed to take them through the inner city of Berlin, all the while enchanting them with snips of information only real Berliners a re privy to as well as the odd bit about the more well-known sights such as the Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag and so on. Basically I try to give them a fun tour of Berlin that focusses much more on the enjoy-factor than the mindless reproduction of touristical information.
So what do I do this job for you ask? Is it because of the chicks that come aplenty with every tourist group? No sir to that, our tours are somewhat expensive, ranging from 15 euros at an hourly rate for rental adn starting at 49 euro for a 2hour guided tour. The people going on a tour are usually a little older, those that can easily afford it. Rarely do I get people in my age range.
Is it the money? Surely nothings wrong with being paid 10 Euro an hour with pretty generous tips revolving around 20 Euros per tour. Still thats not it.
Like I said Ive worked lots of other jobs before and the thing that bothered me most in any of these was boredom. Theres nothing worse than sitting on your ass all day while waiting for customers. Its excruciating! This jobs seems pretty much cut out for me, or vice versa.
I love shooting my mouth off, especially when it comes to small talk and entertaining people with crappy jokes. You're never bored because youre always outside doing stuff and bantering back and forth. All the while driving a segway and getting paid...seems like a good deal to me.
Ok,enough with the banter, lets cut to the chase. What everybody is interested in when they talk of segways....
Some of you may have fallen off a bike before. You know how it feels. People will sometimes rush to your aid but you can be sure that there will be some people sitting smugly in their cars and sort of thinking:" haha he fell". In short, its somewhat embarassing, especially when done in the middle of an intersection so everyone can stare at you. I mean nobody's pointing their finger at you and laughing but still...
Now imagine doing the same thing on a segway. Its kinda like falling off a bike...only 10 times worse. People will actually jeer and laugh at you, even pointing fingers. They for some reason dont even start to imagine you might have gotten hurt. I cant really say why, but people just want to see you fall off that thing. I usually tell my guests to not do these people a favor/ do themselves a favor and drive safely. In that way we win and they lose ( people not on segways).
Now lets touch upon the juicy subject of segway crashes.
Hilarious, isnt it? (lol at the monkey driving the segway)
Well in some cases it can really provide some true amusement. Like that one guy who was with us and forgot to turn off his segway or lock its brake. Now what happens if you let go of a segway thats still turned on is....it keeps on going. For at least a couple of meters, then it shuts itself off because it notices the lack of weight on its treads, while still driving ( theyre quite intelligent little buggers). The guest Im speakign of did so in the immediate vicinity of the river Spree.
You probably know what im getting at. Exactly, the segway careened off into the river. Fortunately without its driver. I wasnt there on that tour, however I was told that the thing spent a couple of hours in the river until they managed to pull it out ( they weigh in at about 40-50 kg). It had to undergo some serious maintenance work.
This was quite a rare incident. The usual mishaps are of a more lighthearted nature. People bumping into each other while on segways, clipping other segways and obstacles during the tour, people falling off while getting off or while driving on somewhat slippery surfaces. Thats the kind of stuff that happens quite frequently. To be honest, I expect about 2-3 of these little thingies on every tour. If these cases are truly amusing and nobody has come to any serious harm I sometimes incorporate them into my tour( all the more reason for people to drive safely).
However, I've been witness to some accidents that did not go so well for the people involved.
I usually refrain from relating any of these events to the guests. Dont wanna scare them off of course. Once, while going over an intersection a couple of my guests stopped at a red light while the other half had already crossed the street. Now this is the sort of behaviour I appreciate on our tours ( always driving according to traffic laws) One of the guys was apparently not paying attention and bumped into the guy in front of him who had just stopped. He fell over on his segway and when I helped him up he said he'd just jarred his arm a little. Over the course of the tour his face took on a more and more pained expression. I kept asking him if his arm was hurt but he just politely declined any advice of cancelling the tour and seeing an ambulance or the likes. When we arrived back at the HQ I asked him if he could still move his arm and he said no. Im pretty sure it was broken...
Another time one of the guest kept swerving around a little to eagerly while driving on very sharp gravel. The Segway kept losing grip on the gravel and of course he fell. He messed up his entire left arm because thats what he fell on. You can imagine what landing arm-first on sharp gravel can do to you limb...
One afternoon I went into our garage and found one of our guides sitting on the ground, smoking a cigarette. He seemed pretty shaken-up and I asked him what the deal was. Apparently a lady that was on tour with him had decided to take pictures while driving on the segway ( something we ask customers to refrain from for the sake of their own safety). She ended up going down a curb that was way too high because she wasnt paying attention. She then hit a trailer that was parked near that curb. She managed to hit a very sharp end on that trailer and basically sliced open her entire foot from one end to the other. The guide said he'd never seen so much blood before. They called an ambulance of course because the lady was seriously hurt and kept losing conscience.
When the paramedics came they told him he should stop mopping up the blood because apparently thats their job and it was way too much for him to soak up with a paper towel anyway.
So far nobody has died yet on any of our tours and the cases I just related to you are worst incidents we can account for so far. i can safely say that all of those serious accidents were caused by the drivers themselves by either not paying attention or acting counter to our safety guidelines. The little mishaps also tend to be caused by inattention or reckless drivers.But I guess those people just had more luck.
So remember when you think about driving one of these things: They're basically like any other vehicle in traffic. If you're driving irresponsibly, bad things can happen.
Ok I guess Im done for today. Feel free to ask any questions regarding segways, my person or anything about Berlin. Im also quite the connoisseur of strange asian candy and cakes.
Oh just a little thing i saved for the very last. There is a very persistent myth about segways that is very hard to dispel. Pretty much everybody seems to have heard of this and it seems like it is ingrained into the collective memory of all folks when they think of segways. Rumor has it that the inventor of the segway died on one of these things. That is not true I can assure you the guy is well-off and alive....
However, the ower of the company actually died while driving one of them. He took it for a little spin in his british hometown, near the river wharfe. He fell off a 24 m cliff and ended up smashing on the rocks and drowning.
