At the end of the same year Nelka went for four months to Sofia, Bulgaria where she stayed with the Russian Minister Mr. Bakhmeteff, my uncle and Madame Bakhmeteff who was an American and Nelka's godmother.
She enjoyed very much that stay in Bulgaria and had a very interesting and pleasant time and great success. From Sofia she wrote a number of letters which reflect both the interest of her stay there as well as the continued constant searching so typical of her youth, and perhaps of her whole life.
"How can I tell you how I feel at being here. It is an entirely new world. So interesting and so beautiful! No one could be lovelier to me than Madame Bakhmeteff. She comes in to my room every two minutes and asks me if I have anything under the sun and seems so pleased to have me here. It is really delightful. I have a sitting room next to my bedroom all to myself, filled with every book that I have been longing to get hold of. Everything is so picturesque. I was delighted with Denmark but how different this is. There is something I respond to in that orderly, cold atmosphere, but I think there is more that I respond to in the Orient. How much more simple and less complicated the life is here. I was almost stopped at the Hungarian and Servian frontier because I had no passport. By the merest chance I had a very old one in my bag which was absolutely invalid but which, added to my absolute refusal to leave the train, got me by the three frontiers in the end. I called a Turk and a Servian who were in the same compartment to my rescue and for an hour or more carried on a heated discussion in every language. I am going to ride every day much to my delight. The diplomatic corps have to depend almost entirely on each other and it is very interesting being thrown with people of so many different nationalities. I have been living so fully it seems to me for the last three or four years and still always a crescendo. I don't know why I always write so much about myself--egotistical youth--but how I realize my youth. Even while youth itself makes my head whirl, I stand back within myself and say almost sadly--it is youth. It is sad in a way because I know that the reaction of great interest upon me is youth, and not the interest."