The favorite leisure-time activity of young and old, urban and rural Bulgarians is to get together with friends for informal socializing. Men congregate at the neighborhood tavern or their favorite café to drink plum brandy or wine, play cards, and talk about the latest news. Women gather to gossip at each other's homes, at the village pump, or at the neighborhood playground or park. The evening promenade is an important diversion for all ages and social groups. Walking back and forth at some designated public thoroughfare in small groups of friends or relatives, people greet each other and exchange pleasantries. Sports are a major form of recreation for young people. Soccer is the national sport, and the matches of major teams are followed with great interest. Hiking and picnic excursions are popular among city dwellers who like to get out into the country to enjoy the beauty and tranquillity of nature. In towns and cities, the theater, operas, concerts, and other cultural activities are popular leisure-time diversions. The cinema is extremely popular in both town and village, although increasing television viewing has been reducing cinema audiences. In addition to sports, young people spend much of their leisure time listening to popular music and also dancing. In fact, they are periodically reprimanded by the BKP leadership for spending too much of their time in leisure activities and not enough in socially useful work. CHAPTER 6 EDUCATION The educational system in Bulgaria, as in the Balkans generally, began to develop in a real sense only in the nineteenth century, principally because Bulgaria had been under Turkish rule for 500 years. As education was of little concern to the Turks and an educated Bulgarian population would only represent a threat to their regime, the advancement of a formal educational system was either openly repressed or neglected by the Turks. As a result, the literacy rate in Bulgaria was one of the lowest in Europe at the time of liberation in 1878. During the six decades between liberation and World War II, the educational system had made great progress in providing basic education to young people, but there remained a hard core of illiterates in the adult population. After the Communists took over in 1944, a massive drive in adult education virtually eliminated the problem of illiteracy within a decade. The educational system under the Communists was essentially patterned on that of the Soviet Union, and the desire on the part of Bulgarian authorities to stay within that pattern brought about a general cautiousness as they restructured the system to make it coincide with the newly imposed ideology. Although educational reforms have been enacted with great frequency, they have often dealt with matters of form rather than of substance. The basic adherence to Soviet guidelines has remained intact throughout the years of communist rule.