The Austrians who would not pay the border fee

We reached the border late at night, deliberately, on the theory that there would be fewer people. There were fewer people. There was, however, a group of Austrian travellers, and they had been at it for hours.

The dispute was a small official fee for taking a car through. The Austrians were certain it was invented and refused to pay it. The officers, who spoke Russian and no English or German, were trying to explain, pointing at regulations, and getting nowhere.

Since we spoke some broken Russian, we were asked to translate. You do not say no to a customs officer whose stamp you need, so we stood there in the middle of the night, exhausted after a full day of driving, relaying the same explanation back and forth between two groups who had long since stopped listening to each other.

It ended absurdly. The Austrians said they were short of the exact amount. The officer, visibly beaten, offered to make up the difference from his own pocket just to end the conversation. To the Austrians, this proved the fee had been fake all along. To me, it looked like a tired man at the end of a long shift.

I had had enough. I told the officer I also had less than the full amount. He put his head in his hands, took what I offered, wrote me a receipt for the full sum, and waved us through. We were gone in minutes.

I expect they are arguing there still. The fee was smaller than the dinner they missed while defending the principle, and they left the border angrier than they arrived, having also skipped the forms they would need to leave the country later.