Tag #141177 - Interview #78603 (Jul Efraim Levi)

We reached the Sofia station. My father’s family was waiting for us. Uncles, aunts, cousins, welcomed us with hugs, kisses, etc. We got on a cab. That was my first time in one and I sat next to the coachman. We passed over a bridge crossing the smallest and narrowest river I had ever seen and there were four lions on the bridge railings. [‘Lion Bridge’, located on the main avenue of Sofia, connecting the city center to the station.] Someone told me that they were famous for having no tongues. We turned left past the river, then right and we stopped in front of the house of my eldest paternal uncle. There was a church opposite their house. I heard my cousin say that it was ‘St Paraskeva’ Church and I concluded that something happened every Friday in it. [The Greek Paraskeyi means Friday.] We were in the center of the capital, on the corner of Tsar Simeon Street and Rakovski Street.

There was a radio in my uncle’s house. I remember that in Salonica we once visited some relatives who had bought that miracle of civilization. I must have been five or six years old when I saw for the first time the miracle box, speaking with a human voice. Now, in Sofia, I was already nine years old and I was familiar with it. I was told by my cousins that there was a radio broadcast for a few hours a day and there was a special children’s program. By the way, when I came to Bulgaria, my cousins were older than me. Albert Levi-Pepo was also five years older than me, but we were like brothers. We felt this way ever since we met each other.