THURSDAY — This morning I did the Ethnological and Anthropolog- ical museums and again learned much about the peasant culture of the region. Bulgaria's first president and national hero was Dmitrof whom the older ones among you will remember was the hero of the Reichstag fire trial that Hitler pulled off accusing the communists of setting it as an excuse to move in and take over. Dimitrof gave the lie to his accusa- tions before the whole world and exposed his subterfuge. Anyway there is a big memorial to him on the main street with a changing of the guard several times a day. That night we had dinner at a special restau- rant in the hills above the city with a special ceremony of a drink of wine and a crust of bread at the door for all tourists. What with red and white wine with dinner, Slivovitz with desert and Cognac afterward it wasn't hard to "get happy”.

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FRIDAY Today we took an all day excursion to the Rila Monastery high in the mountains about 70 miles from Sophia. This is a special place to Bulgarians and I learned a lot there. During the 500 year occu- pation of the country by the Turks the monks at this monastery main- tained the Bulgarian culture, language and literature. It was so high in the mountains that the Turks didn't bother them. Thus a monastery becomes a national shrine and explains why, unlike the notion that we have over here concerning religion in Socialist countries, the Bulgarian government actually subsidizes the Greek Orthodox church. The church in this case you see really held the country together under the occupation so that the people are not antagonistic to it.

The Bulgarians are much closer to the Russians too in their govern- mental relationships except on this point of religion. The people are not free to own property or to carry on small businesses as they are in some of the other socialist countries. Part of the extra closeness is due to the fact that Russian Armies have twice saved Bulgaria, once recap- turing it from the Turks with the loss of 200,000 men and again at the end of the last war. Naturally the people feel a closeness. The other thing is that the Cyrillic alphabet used in Russia and Bulgaria was invented by two Bulgarian monks.

I must confess that I had regarded Bulgaria as a sort of Musical Comedy Country, all uniforms, mustaches and boots. One of the good things about traveling is that you learn to get rid of such stupid notions. Sophia is a modern, thriving city with busy shops, lots of goods, flowers, apparently happy people and a lot of national pride as do all the other socialist countries with the possible exception of E. Berliners. (didn't see enough of it to judge).

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