14 dec

We do not like toll roads. First of all, they cost money. They are useful when you want to get quickly from A to B but we don’t want to go fast, and even if we would, Merlin couldn’t.

So the rule is: no toll roads for us. But every rule needs exceptions. One of those exceptions was on our way to and back from Italy. It was an official 7.5 hour journey using toll roads (according to Tomtom) going from Taradeau to Assisi. Without toll roads, the journey would have been double, more than 14 hours.

Today we drove back. The Italian toll system is fabulous. Almost fabulous I should say, you’ll understand the softening of my stance after you’ve read this.

You get on the toll road, you drive on and on, and when you get off, you pay. On the way to Assisi (Arezzo really) we drove for hours and hours. When we drove up to the pay booth Julie and I betted what the price would be. Julie said €50. She won, the fee was €49,20. (Eager to win and guessing Julie always underestimates I had said €50,01) She won her dollar, but she still owes me about a million from earlier bets she has lost, so I just discounted it from the balance.

When we had to pay on our way there, the Italian toll system gladly accepted our bankcard (we have a credit card, but it was only good till the end of november, and we were lax in asking for the renewed one.).

Today, after driving for more than five hours and having to pay our fee, all the cards we owned were denied. The fee was €51,20 (isn’t that expensive, Julie said – wished we would have bet today!) and so we had to go and empty our wallets to be able, after minutes of searching, to come up with the requested amount. The Italian toll booth guy – crazy job – showed no impatience, relaxedly smoking a cigarette or two while we were turning Merlin upside down. It seemed like he regretted the fact that we found the right amount of money. Now he had to go and explain to someone else that bank cards didn’t work, Visa neither by the way.

Ah well. Then we were in France – which has a very irritating toll system, at least in the Provence. Every other 10 kilometres there is a new booth where you have to pay €2,30 or €3,50. For cars it was less, but we were considered a small truck, for good reasons in fact.

At booth one, cards weren’t accepted again. We had found enough small coins earlier in Italy to pay for the first amount but now we were busted. Then Julie suddenly seemed to remember her secret place where she keeps €10 hidden. So we could pay the next two passages.

In the mean time, we had stopped at the two gas stations that we found on our way. None of these had a cash machine, and the clerks in the shop looked very awkward when we asked if it would be possible to pay for €50 extra on top of the coffees we bought.

As we anticipated the next toll booth, Julie counted. We still had €6,50, but we knew we could expect a last toll fee of somewhere in the sevens, based on our experience last week. Luckily the third gas station had a cash machine and we went away armed with €300. “I would be surprised if the fee is going to higher than that”, I told Julie when I got back in the camper – and we drove confidently to the last tool station.

Guess what. They didn’t accept €50 notes! And those were the only ones we had received from the cash machine. The fee was €7,20. We had €300… and thousands in credit. But we were officially €0,70 short. We did have that amount in fact, in real honest euro coins, but the French toll jerks also didn’t accept €0,05 coins.

Woody Allen again. ‘No Panic’, he said jumping out of the camper making agitating moves towards all the people behind the camper: that they better get into a different isle. This battle wasn’t over yet. Joost against bureaucracy. It is as Don Quichot against windmills – it takes a good while.

There I was windmilling. Suddenly I somehow remembered that I had hidden a €2 coin from Slovenia in an unfavorite sock of mine. One of the coins that is still missing in my euro-collection – started at the time of the whole euro-hype-show, when the euro was launched in 2002. A collection, complete regarding all the original members, that is hidden somewhere in the caves of our buried away past (all the Slovenian coins are missing, in fact all the coins from the new euro members are missing!).

All the time I knew about this coin somehow, but my sense of knowing never reached the level of acknowledging, until I saw myself there, outside the camper, as Woody Allen, as Don Quichote. Time for some sereous getting myself together.

I got the coin, paid the fee, and decided, there and then, that this was going to be the last toll road on this journey. Today’s experience was proof of something I really knew already all the time. Tolls and Merlin (and me and Julie), they don’t really go well together.