I FEEL obliged to respond very briefly to Koos Schouten's Double Dutch column last week (`Goodbye', The Sofia Echo, June 3).
Although I sympathise with his problems in dealing with the bureaucracy in this country, I can't help feeling that he is tarring all areas of the system with the same brush and thereby misrepresenting state employees in certain sectors to our readers, who don't necessarily have any personal experience to fall back on when forming an opinion. I refer specifically to the comment that one has to pay to get one's children into a good state primary school or to get treatment in a state hospital. Both of my children go to one of the best state primary schools in Sofia - Vassil Aprilov school on Shipka Street - and we did not pay a stotinka for that privilege, although we do not live in the immediate catchment area. I also have a lot of Bulgarian friends with children at good schools and never once has anyone said to me that they have had to pay a bribe to get them there, although they may have had to pass an entrance test. The same goes for hospital treatment. We must have made 10 trips to Pirogov emergency hospital over the past 12 years, for ourselves or our children, and in every case we received immediate attention, the necessary treatment and after-care. Without paying.
I think that the honest and conscientious teachers and doctors in this country who work for an absolute pittance would be highly offended, and rightly so, to find that they are `en masse' being portrayed to foreigners as corrupt because of a minority of their colleagues.

Christine Milner
Publisher of The Sofia Echo

Sir
FOR a considerable time, I have wondered how long it will be before The Sofia Echo receives so many complaints about the Double Dutch columns that they will be discontinued.
As experienced expats, we meet many odd-balls who we either get on with, or side-step because of their repeated irritating views.
I am a guest in Bulgaria and I have many excellent Bulgarian colleagues and friends here. Having a weekly tirade in The Echo from someone who is obviously unhappy makes most of us squirm. Most foreigners are personally building good local relationships and quietly doing their best in various fields.
Many of the articles are offensive to both sides and do not help anyone. The possible intended sense of humour may be well be lost on Bulgarian readers who may take the words literally.
Yes, there are always differences and difficulties when not working or residing in your home country, but we make things work out. The rule is, if you don't like it, don't complain and make everyone else miserable. It would be better to go home - quietly. The rest of us will stay and continue to make our contribution wherever we can.

With best regards,
Lionel Sainsbury

Sir
While sympathising with Andy Anderson and his traumatic experience (Sounding Board, The Sofia Echo, June 3), it does beg the question, why doesn't he follow the law ? And if he doesn't know it, why is he blaming others for his problems? I believe that he's been here long enough to know the rules, so why doesn't he just pay the import duty and register his car in Bulgaria? It's not such an onerous task (and I've done a few) and no worse than the procedures in other countries. Try flouting the customs laws in the UK and see what happens. Perhaps, instead of his story of woe, he should be writing - "I forgot/ ignored/didn't know the law about car imports, and when I went to the airport, the customs officer quite rightly refused my exit. After some hours of dashing around trying to find a way out of this self imposed mess, a kindly customs chief decided to allow me to circumvent the law and stamped my passport - God bless the Bulgarian Customs Service."
As for the garrulous Mr Schouten. He infers that he doesn't want preferential treatment. That his mission to teach the Bulgarians how to behave and do business, and his special contribution to the economy, should not be taken into account. Well, in my recent experience, and unlike a few years ago, he doesn't need any special treatment. The service in Maria Louisa is as normal as any bureaucratic procedure can be, with intelligent, reasonably helpful staff. Anyone applying for permanent residence is categorically told that they will have to wait three months or more for a decision. It is unlikely that this delay has anything to do with the sometime Bulgarian corruption, but is caused by the high number of applications, many of them by non EU citizens, trying to establish residency before Bulgaria's entry in 2007. If Mr Schouten is so incensed with this delay, which in any case is far shorter than Bulgarians trying to do business in the UK and EU, that he is prepared to leave permanently, then we must say, " bye, bye."

David Clark
Sofia