SOFIA, CITY OF MUD.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3381, 4 July 1927, Page 8

SOFIA, CITY OF MUD.

EXPRESS WHICH NEVER ARRIVED.

(By H. J. Greenwali.) % Mud. Black, oozy, slimy mud. The wheels of your drosky, your horse cab, make high ruts in it as you slither your way to either of the two hotels bl which Sofia does not boast. And here let me say that the Kaiser did not give that famous lunch of his anywhere in Sofia. One remembers the tremendous to-do there was during the war, but the hotel at which the lunch was supposed to be held never heard of it, and the other hotel across the road is equally ignorant. Mystery, Black as the mud is so black are the crows. For crows, you must know, are the birds of the, Balkans. I have seen them in Kischineffj thousands and thousands of them, wheeling in circles, hovering over the disputed land of Bessarabia as if waging for another Day, when Russians and Rumanians will clash across the Dniester. Here in Sofia the crows make their homes in the elm trees around the royal castle. At dusk they return to their ( nests, not single spies, nor yet in bat- t talious, but in army corps. In Sofia one would not expect to find tracesrof M. Henri Letellier, Mayor of Deauville, until latterly owner of the Paris Journal, and part proprietor of many casinos in France, But in Sofia most distinctly M. Letellier is. He owns the casino, frequented by the officers of the Bulgarian Army, and the casino is the one spot of light in this tiny capital city. The castle in which King Boris, the bachelor sovereign of Bulgaria, lives is a small brown stone building standing on an island sit© very near the cathedral which the Communists tried to blow up. The King is a popular’ young monarch, and the difficult post his father, King Ferdinand, left him when he abandoned his throne as soon as defeated Bulgaria sued for an armistice -lie has carried on with dignity. Governing Bulgaria is not a post to be undertaken lightly. Bombs are handled very carelessly sometimes, and when you hire guards to look after you, your enemies may offer them more, money. The Bulgarian and the Russian have many points in common, and that is why so many of the Russian refugees flying from the revolution settled in Bulgaria, and chiefly in Sofia. Here . they run their restaurants, sell articles of the own manufacture, and manage to sdrape together a, living. The French and the Germans have fought a silent war in Bulgaria to capture the trade of the country, but although the French were winning in the beginning, they have had to retire, and the only memory of their attempt is a French newspaper which stiff makes a daily appearance.

_ The Germans, by peaceful penetration, are the commercial masters of the country. Tobacco, the staple industry of the country, is in their hands, and the famous rose-growing industry has also passed over to them. Great Britain is represented by a limited liability company which is developing in a very remarkable manner pig farming for export purposes. In Bulgaria the most extraordinary things happen, or rather they would be extraordinary if tney happened anywhere else. Supposing you were in Rugby, say, waiting ror a train from Manchester for London, and the train never arrived. You would b© astonished, amazed, and expect to find columns in the newspaper about it. But one day_Jhere in Sofia a friend of mine and myself went to the station to catch the Orient express from Constantinople. We were going to Belgrade. The train did not arrive; we waited all day, and half the next day. Then a train was made up in Sofia, and we learnt that the Communists had blown up a, bridge, so we might have waited another week, for they do not repair bridges rapidly in Bulgaria. The night before our departure, I remember, we sat on the terrace of the hotel restaurant, and we looked down across the square, where the crows were cawing in the elms. There was a sound of moufnful singing. It was a division of the army on the march to crush the Communists who had blown up the bridge.