The first I heard of it, it was February 2023, nearly a year after my “infraction” had occurred.

Back in March 2022, while traveling back to Linate airport in Milan for my return to the U.S., I was clocked going 118 km/hr in a 110 km/hr zone. That means I was going 73 miles per hour in a 68 mph zone. Eight kilometers or roughly five miles over the speed limit. Five miles over the limit, people!

The routine for Italian traffic citations is not entirely new to me. The last time I got one was because I had entered a ZTL or limited traffic zone area. (The previous time I had visited the town where I teach each year, the area wasn’t off limits to non-residential traffic. Returning to the university after the Covid closures, I just assumed it was allowed there. I tried to pay that ticket in Italy but that backfired. The story here.)

First you get a notice from your rental car agency. It includes the ticket info but it doesn’t allow you to pay it. It does inform you that if you don’t pay within a certain time period, you’ll owe even more money.

By the time the actual ticket arrives, it’s already way past the payment window. Oy.

I received my rental agency notice in February. I tried to have a friend pay it from his bank account in Italy but the authorities said you can’t make the payment until the final ticket arrives.

Arrive it did, a few weeks ago.

I immediately went online and used my bank account to do an international wire transfer. But after a few days, a message from my bank arrived telling me that the wire had been rejected on the Italian side because the format of the bank account was “incorrect.”

I check too make sure that I had used the right number. I had. But when I reviewed all the paperwork, I noticed that the ticket reference code in the English version of the letter was different from the one in the Italian version. I had used the one in the Italian version.

Luckily, the bank refunded my money, including the wire transfer fee of $5.

Yesterday, I sent another wire, this time using the code in the English version of the letter.

To be continued…