Hills alive with the Sound of Music

My timing has been perfect for experiencing the local festival, which they tell me is shrinking year by year. Some relics of the communist past are hard to break, and the mayors of the local towns who should be facilitating the event for the benefit of the population do not want to stick their heads above the parapet. So they do nothing.
This tiny stage is all that remains of a once glorious tradition. The party goers were all standing around chatting to each other, drinking and generally behaving well.
There are 3 big, back-to-back festivals in the valley later in the year: Heavy Metal, pop and reggae. The biggest by far, attracting 30,000 people, is the metal one. Surprisingly, this is also the best behaved group even though movement is well nigh impossible. The worst is reggae which seems to be frequented by impoverished drug users and brings little to the economy.Read more