Translation of levied in German

So she and I went to the food store to buy some lunch. However, the store had almost no food and one could pay in local currency or in US dollars. One could really see the country's poor economy.
Sometimes this is an outcome of personal problems or incidents. For example, there could be a crime commited by someone of a certain origin. The consequence could be that the victims would blame an entire community.
She was a very cute twenty six year old woman from the area, had a perfect English and could be understood well. She told us to put on good shoes and we started walking towards the valley.