Road Tax

Slovenija. A truly beautiful country. One that I will return to for deffinate.

I have decided not to bike to Croatia and purchase insurance at the border for the reason being that I wanted to travel continuously with no coming back on myself or ferries. With no insurance for all the countries I needed to get to Greece, my trip could prove to be a little over budget.

I write this from my room in Graz, Austria. I rode via Austria at the recommendation of great biking roads from an Austrian school friend of mine. I am staying in a motel, just outside Graz but have seen nothing of the country yet. The distant mountains are glorious but apart from that, the motel still looks like a motel.

Border time.

When leaving Slovenija, a couple of border officials jumped out and started to flag me down. Weird I thought. This never normally happens when traveling from one EU country to the other. I stopped, de~helmeted and showed him a smile. 'Were is your sticker' he asked harshly.
Oh, I thought to myself, all EU veichles have there countries letters before there registration number. Britain, not liking to follow her European family does not. I assumed I had to put a GB sticker on my bike somewere. But no. I was suddenly confronted with a large folder of V5 documents and passports. 'You show me' he said. I pulled out all my documents and handed them over. He then went in to a speech about when I use a Slovenijan highway I must buy a sticker from a petrol station and stick it to my bike. So I now have to pay a fine. How much I said with a small smirk, remembering all the 100b [£5] fines I had to pay for small road crimes in Thailand. 300 euros he then said. He had my bike papers and my passport and the upper hand. No amount of sweet talking was getting me out of this. I had to pay. So I handed over my card and paid the fine with a very fake smile. Bastards I muttered under my breath as I moved away. The infuriating thing was, I actually read about this highway charge before I set of, only I got Slovakia muddled up with Slovenija. When i crossed the border with Austria, i stopped at the first petrol station and asked the lady if there was a fee for using the Austrian highways, yes there was she said. So I have bought my Austrian sticker and stuck it too my side pannier.