Thursday, September 9, 2010
Ok, so we were warned, by the car rental company, to expect Switzerland to charge us a "road tax" of about $50. However when we crossed into Switzerland, there was no border crossing station and nowhere to pay the tax. We drove to Zurich and when we left we felt pretty smug about skating on the tax. Unfortunately as we went from Switzerland back into Germany we crossed thru a very few miles of the westernmost tip of Austria. And that is where disaster hit us! There was a border guard station as we left Austria and that is where we learned that Austria also has this "road tax" and the fine for not having paid it was $160!! What really chapped us was that we had been crossing in and out of Austria for quite a few days and nowhere was there any sign about this tax or any place to pay it. At least there weren´t any signs in English and who can read all that German stuff anyway? We finally figured out, based on something the border guard said, that they just manned the autobahn crossings and we had been crossing on back roads all this time. Sheesh, if we had only known that we would have taken the back road out of Austria and saved a bundle.
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