Back to AtD. "Kind of like Omaha", p945

[Mark Kohut]

p. 945 Sofia: Goes back in sources to 59 B.C. always a major crossroads, transportation route.

Population remained small until Turks gone in 1879 "a city reimagined in the thirty-odd years
since the Turks had been driven out, winding alleyways, mosques, and hovels replaced with
a grid of neat wide streets and Europeanized public works on the grand scale.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia

We know how TRP prefers 'winding alleyways' over the rationalization of grids...with a 
slam at the State and its helpful "works'

I'll also add this as more circumstantial evidence that TRP likes (as vision) small is beautiful
over larger when rationalization often takes over......I might say TRP believes in human-sized
cities and comparing Sofia w Omaha--no wikilink, you can find---shows accuracy (In a 
comparison only he--and Calvino?--might make on paper?)---with gridness as Omaha's
way as well..........Omaha as the heart of America...rationalized, rich, Puritanical, non-showy
just 'pragmatic' in the narrow meaning of that word in America? 

So what Sofia was turned into after 1879 until this point in the novel....