Decisions, Problems and Puzzles

Driving an unfamiliar car in a foreign country, we need fuel. There’s a gas station. Is it full service or self-serve? Or which pumps are designated as one or the other? I find the self-serve pump and we are on the correct side for the tank. Now which fuel? Gasolina. Gas. Gotcha. Look at pumps…green, yellow, red, blue…. Well green in the US is diesel. NOPE. Not here, it’s the lower octane gasoline. Hah! Can’t fool me. Now where is the lever, button, switch?? Shannon is at the end of the island deciphering the Portuguese pay screen. Shoulder shrugs. Squeeze the nozzle. Hooray! Gas flows and car tank fills. Shannon pays and off we go, congratulating ourselves on being such savvy world travelers. Until she looks at the receipt. I picked “Yes” or “Accept” on the pre-mentioned conversion question.

That receipt resurfaced later in another post I wrote about driving and fuel prices being much higher here than in the U.S. and circles us back around to decision making and fatigue. Let’s see how many of you can figure out this equation:
If Gasoline is 1.79eur/liter, how much is that in Dollars per gallon?
Never mind. We must get gas anyway, just pay it. But don’t forget which conversion to choose or not to choose!!

Being constantly inundated with new issues to solve is a part of daily life in slow travel.

A recent riddle presented itself to us in Portugal. We know from experience and from advice we heeded from fellow travelers and Vloggers, that whenever you are presented with a bill to always select pay in the local currency. Simple. Paying in US Dollars means they do the conversion for you at an exchange rate that is less favorable to the customer than allowing your bank to do the conversion at a better rate. So, we have paid in Leke in Albania and Euro everywhere else so far instead of paying food and restaurant bills in USD.

Now cue Portugal’s twist. After selecting payment in Euros, a second screen comes up with “Do you wish to convert? Accept or Reject.” (Wording may be slightly different). This is new. Ummm. Usually, two negative responses result in transactions not being processed or cancelled, right? WRONG in this case. A somewhat sneaky way of asking the same question twice is what is being done here, and when we don’t speak the language, there’s a line behind us and we’re just trying to bag our own groceries and get out of the way, we later discovered that we had made an error. The receipt doesn’t lie. We paid way more than we should have on two occasions.

To be fair, our first time doing it was at the gas pump. Here’s how that process goes, and I’ll add “Buckle up” as per some of my previous driving posts. So, it’s a bonus tip if you will, or just a “What not to do so you don’t look silly like Greg.”