Plovdiv is a sprawling, modern city with an ancient Roman core that has been mostly built over. There are some nice examples of national revival architecture, museums and a pleasant, bustling, pedestrian promenade - complete with McDonalds.

On top of one of the Plovdiv hills there is an enormous, rather attractive statue of a 1945 vintage Soviet soldier. It is a monument to the "liberation" of Bulgaria from the Nazis. It also became a symbol of communism, an economic and philosophical system which has definitely fallen out of favor. It has been suggested (seriously?) that the statue be encased by a gigantic replica of the Coca Cola bottle. Nooooo! If Bulgaria thinks that Soviet Communism was bad wait till they really learn about western materialist consumerism. It can burrow much deeper into the soul.

We arrived in Plovdiv on September 9. That date may not mean much to the rest of the world but it is Liberation Day, the anniversary of the ascension of the Communist party to power in 1944. Roughly the equivalent of Bastile Day in France or the Fourth of July in the US, Liberation Day passed without so much as a whimper - that we could detect. When we visited the statue of the Soviet soldier on September 10 there were three large bouquetes of red roses at the base - but nothing else. It was pretty sad. One of the objectives of Marxism was to raise the poor out of their desparate situations. This shouldn't be forgotten so quickly.