Yesterday was another cold rainy day here in Sofia. I started the day by going to the Museum of Socialist Art, which seemed like it would be interesting. Plus, it should be warm and dry.
First I had to find the museum. I thought it was by the stop on the metro, but I walked past the meeting point for the free walking tour (which I already went on), and I met the tour guide-he mentioned that it was actually 3 metro stops away, and to look for three skyscrapers, and the museum was right behind the skyscrapers.
So I took the metro 3 stops, about a 15 minute ride, and looked for the skyscrapers-I found them-and walked to the back-but couldn't find the museum. I asked someone on the street, he looked at the paper I had in my hand describing the museum, and saw there was a phone #, and advised me to call the phone number. Gee, thanks! That was helpful.
Anyway, I soon found the museum, and found that 3/4 of the museum was sculptures outside, so I took a look at them, but that didn't help my quest to stay out of the rain. These we're largely sculptures of Lenin and other communist era figures. The remainder of the art was on the inside-mainly paintings that weren't real interesting-and there wasn't a program/guide to explain the art (and the people who worked there didn't speak English.
So I was there maybe an hour, and went back to the hostel to take a nap-since I didn't get much sleep the night before since I went out.
Late in the afternoon, I went on a Communist walking tour, which discussed communism in Bulgaria as a satellite state of the USSR. I learned that few escaped-but one who escaped Bulgaria was a writer, who escaped to London and began to write about the evils of communism, and he was attacked by a dart gun and killed mysteriously. Supposidly the killer had an umbrella, and this was his weapon. I also learned that in the late 80's, communist basically forced the Muslim population to assimilate, threatening jail time if they didn't change their names/dress to reflect the general populace.
So it was an interesting, abeit long tour of four hours. We saw sights such as a monument to the Russian liberation after World War 2-which people wanted taken down, but he mentioned that it couldn't be removed since it was the property of both the Bulgarians and Russians.
After the tour, I ate dinner at Subway, as I like the veggie delight-I was still hungry-so I wanted to see if dinner was still being served at the hostel-but it was too late-I missed it. So I bought a pack of cookies and went back to the common area of the hostel, where I fell asleep for awhile.
