to go or not to go-box

First we thought let’s just buy a ‘cheap vignette’ for the roads in Austria. I knew that wouldn’t be ok and then the guy also told us we definitely need a GO-BOX because of the weight of our 4wheelmachine. You can buy them at every gas station near the Austrian border, nothing to worry, just buy one tomorrow, he said.

But it didn’t feel good, so we went off the ‘Autobahn’ again for a quick stop and the Box. Quick stop my arse. At first i drove into the ‘little car’ parking area which was completely full with cars and friendly waving people. After that we found the entrance to the ‘big car’ area which was also completely full. There were way to many trucks and people everywhere. We decided to give it a shot the next day.

We started early, it was slightly snowing, we had coffee, what could possibly go wrong? Well nothing went wrong, just a normal day at the office. At the first petrol station the manager had a day off, at the second adres the BOX was strangely sold out, at the third stop within 45 minutes and 30 kilometers, the friendly employee told us we had to drive just 500 meter further. We stopped at the last station before the border and the controlsystems.

‘Servus’, said the lady at the desk, ‘Wo mit kann Ich dir denn helfen Bubilein?’ Assuming the ‘Schnuggelpuppe’ was talking to me at that moment, i kindly asked her if i was on the right spot to buy a GO-BOX. Standing underneath a big green sign with GO-BOX on it made me look a bit like a complete moron, but the nice lady was just smiling and started talking a lot of south-German words. I quickly responded with some euro’s and a registration certificate and prayed to Franz Beckenbauer that would be what she was asking for. It was. I could hardly believe it. I made it.

We put the f*&^%%^cking thing on the right place at the windscreen and off we went, finally. Austria, Grüss Gott.

Update: Today i managed to login to my Go-account, already after the third round of new passwords. I noticed already 55 euro’s were missing and now there’s not enough left for our way back. I’m not even thinking about the amount of money i had to pay for Toll and tunnel, i’m just wondering why I can’t upgrade my credits. It seems to be a sort of Prepaid account and the only way to put money on is at a ………. . Now i’m getting nervous already, will we find the right petrol station in time?