Communist Era Light Shows??

Arriving at 10pm into the hostel I was greeted by a bunch of what seemed like 1000 Americans playing drinking games...so i hightailed it out of there downstairs to a more subdued atmosphere, I think I might be getting old, for some reasons drinking games with a bunch of strangers don't appeal as much as they used too?!?

I have somehow managed to stretch my limit of number of beds to a dorm room to 10! Will be making a valiant effort to keep it to 6 from now on......9 ppl traipsing in at 3 in the morning from a night on the town does not make for a very pleasant smelling room the next morning!

Managed to hook myself up with 3 quite lovely (which almost never happens) Americans to tour the ruins of of the fortress the next morning....we managed to fit in 5 or so churches as well....a good effort, and they were all beautiful! The fortress is amazing, and the town itself is built into a hill side. The church at the top of the fortress was crazy! The inside was painted in the 80's with some pretty scary looking scenes, very impressive, I have never seen anything like it!

The afternoon saw me wandering the streets of the old town and hiding out in a handmade jewelery store for an hour during an electrical storm (how convenient).There has been a storm here every afternoon for the last week!!! They are pretty awesome!!

After dinner at a pretty great restaurant in town with an entertaining english couple with very cynical dry humor, and some amazing dessert including bulgarian Yogurt (which is AMAZING) we rushed back to try and catch the communist era light show at the fort. The show is on EVERY night because asian tourists come by bus from sofia to the most picturesque town in Bulgaria (the old capital) and stop long enough to see the lightshow (which they pay for, and we see for free) before heading on to Varna, I cant understand it at all! Veliko Turnovo is stunning!

We missed the first light show, but luckily another bus load of asians came along and paid, so on it came again! The lights are set to music and symbolize gunshots and soldiers marching......it is all quite weird! The entire fortress is covered in lights......spectacular.....but ward, bulgarians can be quite odd at times!

It turned out that there were 4 of us traveling to Romania the next day on the train, so I had a bit of company. The trip was cool, there was a lot to see, and we were treated to another afternoon electrical storm whilst traveling over the plains into Bucharest. We also managed to entertain ourselves by playing a bit of cheat! I seem to have lost my touch with that game! I have a pretty good poker face, but was too busy trying to keep my balance on the train and stop from falling into the Brazilian guys lap.