Slept while passing through Belgrade. Woke up in the middle of Servia, while passing a station where music was playing. Rode along the Morave Valley; it is wide and flanked with hills. There are many cornfields and meadows, with cows grazing. From Nisch (a city of low houses) we passed through a small valley bordered with high, rocky, hills. Along the Bulgarian Morave, Pirot (Bulgaria), the district becomes a plateau, with mountains in the distance. The country is very rocky, and there is very little farming. The nearer you get to Sofia the more the country becomes farm land. Finally, it merges into a broad level plain, with the Balkans in the background. Sofia: a small station, and small houses. It was getting dark. JULY 14, 1916 Slept through Adrianople on my way to Turkey. Passed through the customs. Country: Mountainous; little developed; no trees, but now and then villages, with a few little houses, thatched with straw, and scattered. For little stretches the country is covered with bushes. Most of the country is uncultivated, but here and there you see a corn or potato field. The railroad is a one-track affair, with very few sidings. Service very poor now, due to the war; long waits at the stations. The people are poorly clothed, with gaudy sashes and queer headpieces. Just at present they are celebrating some fast days. The women work like the men, but always have a cloth wrapped around their heads. We met a military transport; the men are brown and healthy looking. Their whole equipment seemed German in origin. Near the ocean, the farming is carried on on a large scale. At the Bay of Kutshuk, I saw camels grazing, for the first time. The ocean itself seemed brown, green, violet--all colors. At the shore people were swimming, and there were two anti-aircraft guns mounted. St. Stefano is an Oriental town in every sense of the word. At the shore there are neat little European houses. Here, there is a wireless station, etc., just as in Johannistal. Then came Constantinople. From the train, you cannot see much; mostly old, dirty houses, that look as if they were ready to topple over at the first puff of wind. At the station, I was met by several German aviators, and taken to the hotel. The evening, I spent with some officers and a number of gentlemen from the German Embassy. [Illustration: READY FOR THE START] [Illustration: BÖLCKE AND HIS BROTHER MAX IN FRANCE (AUGUST, 1916)] JULY 15, 1916 Early in the morning I rode to the Great Headquarters and reported to Enver Pasha, who personally gave me the Iron Crescent. Enver, who is still young, impressed me as a very agreeable, energetic, man. Then I went through the Bazar, with an interpreter. This is a network of streets, alleys and loopholes, in which everything imaginable is sold. Then went to the Agia Sofia, the largest mosque, and to the Sultan Ahmed, which has been changed to a barracks.