Matilda Levi with her parents on vacation

This is me and my parents on holiday. We went abroad several times. Here we are in Czechoslovakia, in 1930. We are on vacation in Karlsbad. There was a rack railway there. It was beautiful. And there were many crystals. We [in Bulgaria] didn't have anything like this here at that time. We bought a crystal vase from there. Later it disappeared, during one of our moves.

We didn't go to the seaside. When I was a child, we used to often go to Bankya. This was a small resort place in the past; today it is part of Sofia. They say that when I was a child we went during the holidays to Tryavna, but I only dimly recall it. The air was better there. We went to Zheravna: there was a young shepherd there. I liked him and he liked me, too. He gave serenades for me. In the mornings, he passed by with his goats. He had a flute and played it and I stood at the window and watched him. I remember that once we went to Hisarya. This is a Bulgarian mountain resort, famous for its healing mineral waters. My mother took therapy there; she had high blood pressure.