As a disabled person, I wrote in The Sofia Echo a couple of years ago how Sofia is the world's most inaccessible city for a wheelchair user.

After reading `"Foreigner on the fast lane to fear" by Colin Munro in a recent issue, I feared the situation may be even worse.

Sadly, I had to attend a family funeral in Sofia last week and the roads and pavements appear even worse.

So afterwards I visited some of the many malls that have sprung up,  in search of level surfaces and lifts. Luckily I was not disappointed and was able to move round freely and I even got into the Imax cinema in the Mall of Sofia although I had to use the staff lift.

Imagine my disappointment when, on leaving the Mall, I was refused by half a dozen taxis on the Mall rank as they viewed my journey of about four miles as not far enough for them to accept my fare.

Tom Goodison

* Editor's note. As a matter of record, here is an extract from the August 2002 article by Tom Goodison.

"Landing in Sofia, I was slightly nervous about the service I would receive in Bulgaria. I need not have worried, as I was taken from the plane by airport staff in my own wheelchair and zoomed through the terminal, passport control and customs with my luggage with the minimum of fuss, and taken straight to the waiting car in the car park.
Our relatives live in a first-floor flat so I had to struggle up three flights of stairs without a handrail. Not many houses in the city have lifts.

That was fun I could have done without, coming down even more so, but with a little help from my carer, I managed.

She then decided to take me to the city centre in my motorised wheelchair.

The major problem is that Sofia's street are mainly cobbled, which is not a problem for the motor, but requires a Herculean effort steering the wheelchair.

Luckily, nearby Vassil Levski street was tarmac, giving a smooth surface and at the top with the junction of Dondukov were the only dips in the pavement kerb allowing access onto the road for wheelchairs.

Sadly, most of the streets and pavements are badly maintained, and the lack of car parks means that everyone parks on the pavements while the pedestrians step into the road. There are also many old cars abandoned on the pavements.

I was grateful to get to city centre banks and shops, though not without a lot of rattling and bumping (my carer still thinks some of her fillings are loose).

As readers will know, finding and getting to a suitable toilet is a key part of any disabled person's trip out.

Unfortunately, Bulgaria has never heard of disabled toilets apart from one at the airport that, as usual, was occupied by an able-bodied person.

I could find no others in the city, so thank goodness for international hotels, such as the Radisson SAS Hotel Sofia, which always have facilities for the disabled as well as an excuse (not that I needed one) for a drink in an air-conditioned bar."

Szabo Gyorgy
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