My recent letter to The Sofia Echo about the use and misuse of headlights set my memory working, thinking about some of the fun (without laughing) I've had over the past 15 years of driving in Bulgaria.

My first driving experience came during the dark days of 1992. Some friends had hired an Opel of rather dubious vintage, and brought it to Sofia airport for me. When I arrived they immediately suggested that I drive them home to get a little road practice. I must have found, and dropped in, every pothole on the badly lit and marked road into the city. "Ah," they said, "you must learn to drive in another dimension here, not only looking where you're going, or watching for other drivers' manoeuvres, but also the state of the road. Otherwise, you'll end up with punctures, bent wheels and bent nerves." This was useful advice as we still have similar conditions, even though our wonderful Sofia mayor made great play out of symbolically filling in a pothole when he first came to power.

After my first drive, I soon became familiar with some typical Bulgarian driving habits,like ignoring red lights if no one appeared to be coming, ignoring all white lines, speed limits, road works signs, making up two or three lanes out of one to gain advantage at junctions, parking anywhere including the pavement, as long as the spider can't get at you, etc.etc. I was out one night looking for a recommended restaurant when I arrived at the wrong end of the one-way street where it was located. "Oh damn!" I said, "we'll have to go in a circle to the other end of the street." "No, no," said my companion. "It's ok, you can go down this street the wrong way, it's only a short one!"

My next notable experience was being stopped by the road police for traffic offences. I had brought a battered old Sierra from somewhere. I was unaware of the requirements for owning a car. I insured it, but I knew nothing about road tax, annual tests or any of that stuff. I had met a Bulgarian friend off the flight at Varna airport, and while chatting away on the road into the city, I completely forgot about the usual police radar trap at the end of the magistrala (highway). Next thing I knew, I was having a policeman's baton waved at me, ordering me to stop. The policeman, with his hat stuck on the back of his head and his stomach hanging comfortably over his belt, approached my window, "Dobur den, documenti gospodin!" I gave him all the documents I had but it didn't seem to make him very happy. He strutted around my car, tut tutting, and then returned to my window. "This is very serious," he said. "Speeding, technical review out of date, no road tax, cracked windscreen - that's four offences."

At this point my friend intervened. "Look, he's an Englishman and doesn't know the regulations too well." "That's no excuse," he said, feigning surprise that we should mention it. We decided we had better get out of the car to plead my case. After a little discussion it transpired that my friend was a journalist, not that this had any bearing on my crimes. On learning this he said: "Well, we could settle the matter here, but you won't report it in your newspaper, will you?" We promised not to, and after he had given us a lecture on my various offences we exchanged pleasantries and a small gift for his children and off we went. I thought that I had better get the car fixed as soon as possible to avoid further trouble, so I had the screen repaired but then discovered that the law demanded that all cars be tested in their place of registration. In my case this was Sofia. Oh dear! This was going to be risky if I was stopped again on the long trip back, but I decided I had to take the chance and be careful with my driving. Well, of course, the inevitable happened. At one of the tunnels, just a little over the speed limit, I was "palsied" by a policeman lurking like a vulture at the exit. Knowing I was in trouble again, I simply asked the policeman if we could settle the matter there and then. He nodded towards his car and a small bank note inadvertently dropped out of my pocket onto the bonnet. Honour satisfied, we wished each other good night and a safe journey.

Annual testing at that time was carried out by official testing stations, and I had no idea what to do. So when I got back to Sofia I called another Bulgarian friend of mine who ran a service station and asked him if he could get my car tested as soon as possible. "Come here and bring the documents with you," he replied. When I arrived at his garage he told me to give him the documents and wait. "What about the car?" I asked. "Well, I'm not taking the car, or they will find lots of things wrong, and it'll cost you a fortune to repair it. Don't worry, I have a friend in the testing station." About 20 minutes later he returned with a smile on his face and a new certificate. So now I could go and pay my road tax and everything would be "legal".

I don't think the situation is much better now that testing has been privatised. After all, its not so profitable to actually test the car, it's too time consuming. I have noticed that they at least test the brakes now - this is a step forward. When I last took my car for testing, I saw that the examiner had taken two pollution samples from my exhaust. He pinned one to my forms and put the other in his drawer. Perhaps he just had to keep a copy? Or could it just be he was going to use it for the next old fume-belching relic that came in? Maybe after years of living here, I'm just getting too cynical.

Even though I drive about 30 000km every year, I've been fortunate enough only to have had minor accidents. The first one was in the old Sierra. It was rush hour on an extremely cold winter's morning, and I was trying to ease my way into the traffic on Bulgaria Boulevard. In front of me was an old Mercedes taxi. We both started to slide on the sheet of ice covering the slope down to the boulevard. As he met the cleared road he was able to stop. I wasn't. We were only crawling and the damage was minimal so I got out to be greeted by the driver who distinctly reminded me of Uriah Heep. Not wanting to block the traffic, we exchanged phone numbers and agreed to meet later to settle the matter. When I met Heep later, he said: "You're supposed to call the police when you have an accident. If you don't give me 200 leva I'm going to call them and tell them you were drunk and ran away!" My immediate reaction, apart from wanting to punch him on the nose, was to pick up my GSM, saying, "Ok, I'm calling them right now and I'll tell my own story about you!" This unnerved him, and he quickly agreed to a payment of 50 leva to repair his broken light.

Some years later, I was involved in a collision with some crazy driver who suddenly came out of a side turning and bashed my car. It didn't occur to me that he was drunk. After all, it was only mid-morning! Despite his protestations and offers to pay for all damage, I called the police. When they arrived they took out their breath testing equipment. I was shocked. "What, at eleven o'clock in the morning, you must be joking!" To my great surprise the other driver was well over the limit, having the equivalent of half a bottle of vodka inside him. The police quickly carted him off to the station for a blood test and a driving ban.

Fortunately, I have only suffered a few breakdowns. A notable incident occurred when we were travelling home from a holiday on the Black Sea. I flashed my headlights at an oncoming car to warn him of a police trap and my car stopped dead. All the electronic instruments were blinking, and we rolled to a halt by the side of a field being worked by a motley collection of agricultural workers. They soon came to see if they could help and one of them volunteered to take me back to the major crossroads in his ancient Moskvitch while the others plied my friends with bread and cheese, washed down with village wine. Every possible warning light was flashing and winking on the dashboard, but he drove along humming tunelessly, oblivious to the racket from the blowing exhaust. We soon found a rescue car, agreed terms and returned to my car in a convoy. After probing about in the engine compartment the mechanic admitted that he couldn't identify the fault. "Ok," he said, "I'll take you to a garage in Silistra." "Well its 9pm, will we find one?" "Oh, I know somewhere," he said. He hitched my car to his trailer and we all crammed into the rescue car. Arriving at Silistra, we wound our way around the back streets arriving at a very dubious looking tin shed, where some men were working on a collection of ancient cars in various states of disrepair. "Oh, I don't think they will understand these modern electronics," I said, "Chakai chakai, wait, the boss-man here is a master." I waited with some misgivings for about half an hour, while the master and his colleagues crawled all over the engine and discussed various technical points. Eventually, they announced their verdict. "Ok, we've found the problem, you'll be on the road again in 10 minutes," he said. Sure enough, after, well, 20 minutes, they drove the car, now running smoothly, out of the shed. "What was the problem?" I enquired. "Loose earthing strap," answered the master. "The bolt was loose, but you won't have any more trouble now. We've welded it on!"

Of course, I have to comment on the antics of other drivers, particularly in Sofia. Even if you can see the traffic lights, most of which are strategically placed so that you can't, I advise you to look both ways at the junction. Beware of drivers attacking from all sides and keep pushing in or you'll never get anywhere. One day I was approaching a junction while a black Audi behind was tailgating me. When the lights changed to red, I made a rather hasty stop. The driver, wearing his obligatory sunglasses on the top of his head, drew alongside me. He was obviously furious, and with spittle flying from his mouth, shouted "Why did you stop? That was very dangerous!" "But the lights were on red!" "What if I'd been in a Lada with no brakes?" "But the lights were on red!" "It's a good job I was awake or you could have caused a nasty accident!" "But the lights were on red!" At this point he tired of my illogical argument and drove off in a temper, barely missing another car turning across the junction.

Woe betide you if you get caught in traffic jams! Then you will see the full inventiveness of Sofia drivers. They'll use tram lines, indeed any lane as long as it's shorter, zebra crossings, bus lanes, pavements or any means available to save those vital few seconds.

The other motorist's nightmare, completely incomprehensible to most, is the transfer of ownership. Is it really necessary to require that seller and buyer and their respective spouses waste most of the day on something that should be simple? Just how many man hours are wasted by this ludicrous charade, I hate to think. My one serious problem with this procedure was after my documents had been stolen from my car. I was trickling along in the traffic along Vitosha Boulevard close to South Park being closely followed by a decrepit, flat-fronted van. Stopping with the traffic it bumped into me - only a little bump - so I ignored it as one of those things except the van was so close it obstructed my rear view. As I drove off towards the traffic lights the van drew alongside, and the dark-skinned driver shouted that I had a flat tyre. I got out of the car to have a look, and, sure enough, one of my back tyres was flat. I pulled over the lights on the wide pavement and changed the wheel. On the way home I stopped in the tyre service to have the puncture repaired. On inspecting the tyre the mechanic said: "Look at this sidewall. It's been cut with a knife." Then it dawned on me what had happened. I quickly looked in the back of the car for my briefcase. Gone! I had been robbed. The problem was not that there was any money in it, but that all my Bulgarian documents were there. Believe me, there is nothing worse and more time wasting than having to renew your documents, so guard them with your life. First, you must report the incident to the police who don't want to know and certainly don't want to write out a report. After they give you a document to confirm what happened, then you have to visit all the various institutions for renewal, and, on top of that, suffer the indignity of being fined by the police for losing your documents! The worst moment was fighting with the (helpful?) clerks in KAT who refused to accept my application for a new ownership document for the car without the test certificate, and the testing people being unable to test the car without the ownership document. Impasse! This was finally resolved at a meeting with a sensible senior policeman. After listening to my story, he picked up his phone, called the clerk and shouted at her not to be so stupid. When we went back to her desk, she still had that couldn't give a damn look on her unhappy face, but she issued the document without further ado.

Well, I continue to drive, but as the roads and cities get more congested, hopefully fewer kilometres this year. However, I'm always waiting for the next incident or experience and you can bet your life it will be something I hadn't thought possible before. Watch out for the latest mania of the road policeman. You may think that it's only a game of entrapment, but no, they're just intent on making us all better drivers, aren't they?