A week or so after we returned from our great vacation to Washington, D.C. we received a call from the rental car company that we had failed to pay for a 'toll' on the E-ZPass system, and they were charging our account 30.00 USD This 'failure' happened when we were entering the city and on a large, 6 lane hiway packed with cars. We slow to almost a stop when my GPS driving APP states " experiencing construction and an accident ahead, delay of 30 mins or more, would you like to reroute?" Sure, I think, get me out of this mess and to my room...! The driving app voice tells me to get in the far left lane and take the next exit to the left. I comply and as I take the exit, I see a sign that states ' E-ZPass Only'. This has me worried, but I've already committed to the exit, so off I go. It's in the back of my mind during the rest of our stay, but I pushed it to the rear. I know it was my fault for not knowing every part of the Washington hiway system being from out-of-town, Just wish the city would have noticed the Illinois plates on the car when they took the 'picture' and thought, " Ah, another lost tourist let's just charge him 10.00 USD to get our point across." We laughed about how we were 'ciminals' now, and probably on someone's list. This reminded me of a simular event that shows how we can be ignorant of 'unknown facts' (if I may take up some more time.) My first trip to Germany I flew into Berlin Tegel airport and since I had a while to wait for my transportation, thought I'd get a cup of coffee. I had 'Marks' in my pocket and my dictionary just incase. After finishing my coffee, I took the check to the cashier and she rang up the bill. I gave her the coin and she pressed a key and my change came down one of those arm things into a cup. I reached for the coin and she lightly slaps the back of my hand and shook her head 'no'. Not understanding what was happening, I stared at her. She picked up the coin, and put in in a 'tip' container, then hit another key and some other coins came down the arm. She smiled and pointed and shook her head 'yes'. So this was my change. Interesting. This started my long road of not really understanding some things in life, but just to go with the flow and laugh about it later.
We got hit during our last trip to Washington DC. Apparently, the card that our EZPass is connected to expired so we were treated like anyone without an EZPass. Rather than giving us the green light "Thank You," it was giving some other message but we didn't notice that until we had already gone through a bunch of them.