Bulgaria in retrospect

Well, that was all good fun, great skiing, good company and good food.  Very cheap too, can't see me staying in a penthouse apartment on top of a four star hotel in France any time soon.  And generally my crazy plan of hiring a car and driving all round the country worked - a bit of a shame I didn't investigate a bit further how bad the roads would be.

Black run at Bansko

Would I do a similar trip to the same country again?  Sure.  I'd plan things a little differently though... at this time of year, I'd say spend 3 days at Borovets, then to Bansko for 3 more, then get up the next morning and drive to Mount Vitosha, just south of Sofia, where there is a ski resort.  Not a big one, but worth a day trip.  Then back to a Sofia hotel and an easy drive to the airport the next day, sorted.

It would be nice to go back to Pamporovo, not least to cross off 'the wall', I wouldn't drive there from the west again though.  I'd say, go in late April or March, get a modern, 4 wheel drive car (actually I think that applies to any Bulgarian trip), and fly to Plovdiv, just(!) 85km from the resort.  And, it turns out there is another resort, Chepelare, only 10km from Pamporovo, which sounds worth a look too.

No, it is just a bar with a dancefloor, really.

So yeah, come to Bulgaria, it's fun for all the family.  Just don't take your mum to the 'night club'...

Photos to go with this post can be found here.

Bansko - we could be in Austria

Well, more or less.  The architecture tends more to rugged stone buildings than wooden chalets, and the food still has a Greek / Turkish feel, though sausage and schnitzel is available.  But the lifts are Austrian built, and Bansko is a real place with a proper old town, allowing us to mingle with the locals in a way not really possible before.  Again the skiing is good, plenty of snow although strong winds over the mountain mean half the lifts are shut - probably good that we're only here for two days.  This may not be the best resort for beginners though, there are no greens and only a couple of relatively easy blues - nonetheless we see plenty of them.  And plenty of injuries too, go figure.  The reduced ski area does put paid to my attempt to do (nearly) all the runs, but at least I do find an easy bit of off-piste under one of the chairlifts to practice on.

View from our penthouse apartment - oh yes.

One fly in the ointment is buying our lift passes on the first morning - Sunday is a bad day for this, and we queue for over an hour before reaching the window.  And then a middle aged woman in a 'Bansko ski and spa' jacked pushes to the front and spends a full 20 minutes doing... something.  This rather highlights the fact that Bulgaria hasn't quite got the tourist thing yet - some people have realised that it's in their interest to be friendly and helpful, for instance I can't fault the staff at our hotel here (the Elegant Lux), others tend to be surly.  This woman is exceptional though - she pretends not to speak English, but with her is a younger girl who does, and when told that if you treat your paying customers this way they will not return she responds, 'we don't care'.  Well I think I would still return to Bansko, but I'd buy my pass in advance (or they can be bought the evening before, up to 10pm on a Friday or Saturday), and I'd give no money to the 'ski and spa' people, may they quickly go bust.  Queuing for the gondola the day after was also a bit tedious, after no queues at all at the other resorts.  Apparently the trick is to stay at the (5 star!) Kempinsky, which will get you in the priority queue.

On the slopes with the resort town laid out below

It's nice to have an actual town to wander around in, and the main drag down to the old town throngs with tavernas, souvenir shops which open all hours, and even fairground style stalls where we could win stuffed toys with our skill at darts or shooting if we wished.  And yes, the strip clubs are back - 'everything is possible' being one of the more repeatable things the touts call to us.  Eventually we find our way to the Baryakova Tavern, for our first meal outside a hotel, and it is good.  I consume a huge home made sausage, while Austin opts for the 'different kind of meat'.  This turns out to be the traditional Bulgarian 'stew with cheese on top', but this time with both pork and chicken.  Back towards the resort area and I manage to find an actual dance floor with people on it - the 'Happy End' by the gondola.  Still finishes at 2.30, but I guess it'll be later in the high season.  The restaurant is so good that we go back again the next night - and this time I am dragged into the Horo after dinner.  I think the locals were impressed...

Ambience aplenty at the Baryakova

We're worrying about the drive back to Sofia airport though - google reckons 2 hours, some English guys we met on the gondola said between two and three, we allow more like 4 and a half.  And it all goes smoothly enough, until we hit some dual carriageway (yay!) 40km or so out of Sofia, and realise we don't have enough fuel to get to the airport.  Well fine, we'll fill up at the next services to be safe... except... there are no services.  The Zafira's estimated distance to travel drops, then drops to zero, and we are still 10km or so out of the city, and I waste further fuel by turning off into a village which turns out to have no garage.  We look at the map I'd downloaded to my phone, find a petrol station right where the main road hits the Sofia ring road, and head for it... and while the fuel warning light, which has been on for the last half hour, starts to flash with 2km to go, we make it.  This last bit of excitement over it's time to head back to grey, damp England.

Photos to go with this post can be found here.

Pamporovo - the drive(s) from hell

Heading away from Borovets is easy enough at first, we head downhill in daylight, and as the sun sets we get onto what is, for Bulgaria, a main road - single carriageway, but mostly straight with not too many potholes.  Things take a turn for the worse when we turn off towards the resort, the roads are very poor and soon we are driving into the mountains, along a twisting route bordering more huge lakes.  Probably very pretty in the day, slow work at night though.  And increasingly there are chunks of ice on the road, and then more and more snow to drive through... the last fifty kilometres is a nerve-wracking ride over packed snow, in first or second gear all the way, and the car is sounding increasingly frail.  But after some five hours we make it, then have to ask where our apartment complex is, and almost make it to the top of the steep snowy track that leads to it.  We abandon the old Ford and walk the last few hundred meters, arriving at the Complex Kamelia with frayed tempers and empty stomachs.  Thankfully they have a restaurant open late and serving excellent and hearty Bulgarian food, the 'poor man's sizzler' featuring a selection of pork, chicken and vegetables on a hot skillet is a highlight.

TV tower on Mount Snezhanka.

Pamporovo is oddly spread out for such a small skiing area... our apartment is two kilometres from the centre, such as it is, with no lift or piste between.  It's also strange to see a large number of half built apartment blocks - not only is there no real infrastructure here, but the ski area surely isn't big enough to support them all.  Some sort of property bubble I suppose...  A small problem now is that Stoykite, from which we've booked our skis, is fully seven kilometres away by road - sounded like a simple drive back in England, but now we decide to go with a taxi, which turns out to be more of a white-knuckle ice rally experience... On reaching Stoykite, the lift isn't running and the ski shop is unmanned - thankfully a phone number on the door allows us to summon a man to give us skis, though we have to get the taxi back too - this time with our skis in the boot, which the driver holds closed with sticky tape.

Finally getting to the mountain, we find every lift leading up to the same point at the mountain top - distinguished by a communist-era television tower that now houses a panoramic cafe.  And again the skiing is excellent, lots of snow, and with both some good slopes for beginners and some challenging blacks for me to bomb down.  Although to my shame I fail to get on the steepest, the 'wall' - the route to it from above is shut, and I fail to spot that there is also a drag lift to the top until too late.  Again the lifts are second-hand French, one even with a bubble, though there are also a couple of ancient things of communist manufacture.  Alex and I risk the two-man one, having little choice from where we are, but decline the single-man version.  For lunch we find a nice little hut at the mountain top, by the start of the #3 and #4 black runs... a roaring log fire warms our toes while we eat some excellent salami and cheese on toast.

Good food and a log fire.

Rather than find a way into the resort centre which doesn't seem to consist of much at all, we keep to the Kamelia complex - there's a bar, a (free) pool table and the restaurant is good.  This night we are entertained by a DJ (not so good), and then by the other diners dancing a tradional 'Horo' - rather cool.  The next day we have to drive away though... and in the morning the snow is coming down hard.  After a morning of crazy skiing through blizzard conditions, Austin reports that the road down through the centre is so bad even the locals are crashing - among other things a coach has collided with a snow plough.  So - we decide to head off from the hotel at 3.  At least we have a better car - the Ford would not start the previous day, so the car hire people, after a bit of argument, drove a rather newer Opel Zafira all the way from Sofia for us.  And the snow has stopped falling, though there is still a lot on the road.  Is it worse than Alex's drive up here?  Probably not, but I certainly do not enjoy it, particularly the bit where I'm following a truck uphill, and it stops to let an articulated lorry barrel past the other way... I just about keep moving forward to pass the truck - if I'd stopped I rather doubt we could have moved on.  The four wheel slide on a bend later on was fun too - but after a couple of hours we're below the snow line, and from there the way to Bansko is easy enough - we're there by 7pm.


Photos to go with this post can be found here.

Borovets - rather nice as it happens

This is the first of three resorts we're heading for... at the time of planning I thought they were the only three in the country, wrongly as it turns out.  But anyway, the four of us, the initial two having been joined by Austin and Claire, head out of Sofia in our hire car, an elderly Ford Focus estate, in the direction of Borovets.  Turns out to be an easy enough, and very scenic drive taking around 90 minutes, we pass a horse drawn buggy on the outskirts of Sofia, and then a series of large lakes on the way into the mountains.  Borovets turns out to be a really nice resort, and we're ideally placed at the Hotel Rila right at the bottom of the pistes.  It's much bigger here than we expected, with runs ranging from flat, narrow greens and gentle blues up to long, sweeping blacks.  The lifts and the single gondola seem to be second generation French, perfectly adequate, and there is an awful lot of snow here.  In fact I think I could happily spend a week here, exciting though the road trip we have planned is.  Maybe in a week I'd manage to do every run, as it is I miss the very highest red (the lift is closed) and a bit of the longest green.  While there aren't that many runs here they do tend to be very long.

Heading up on the gondola.

Initially we do struggle a bit with the food, I get a lukewarm spaghetti for lunch at the Black Tiger, and the hotel buffet dinner is none too warm either.  It seems Bulgaria hasn't yet grasped that you can continue to heat buffet food after it comes out of the kitchen - this is a general theme at breakfast too.  Given how cheap it all is, I'd advise not going half board to hotels, each one will have an a la carte restaurant too.  That said you can just keep an eye out for the staff bringing new, hot food out.  There is also a bit of an issue with white wine, they don't seem to drink it here and so don't know it should be chilled.  I would just stick with red...

Outside the Hotel Rila.

In the evening, we ignore the numerous touts trying to get us into bars (and strip clubs, they're here too), and find a nice little place with some live music (think it was called Mamacita's) and drink lots of Bulgarian dark beer.  All good.  The next day we move a little bit further from the chair lift for lunch (that is, not the very nearest one), to Mamma Mia's steakhouse, and get a bit more real Bulgarian food.  Seems to involve a lot of meat, two different kinds of cheese (white - basically feta - and yellow), and not much in the way of vegetables beyond potatoes and pickled cucumber.  Turkish and Greek influence is plain, this is one country where you can get a kebab after the day's skiing.  Of course steaks and pizzas are available, and in Mamma Mia's at least it all seems to be hot.  On the third day they even give us a free shot of something green and aniseed-flavoured (Bulgarian viagra, the waiter claims).

Borovets isn't much of a place though, basically a resort and nothing else - many of the staff live a little way down the road in Samokov which is probably worth a visit.  There is a fair bit to do nonetheless even just in our hotel, it has a small shopping mall, a spa, a good sized (if somewhat chilly) swimming pool and even a rifle range.  Fun is generally had, although I'm a bit disappointed when I check out the hotel nightclub the second night.  No, not like that - I had checked and here the resort is sufficiently English-attuned (around half the skiers seem to be English, the rest either locals or other Eastern Europeans) that nightclub means what it does at home.  But while it is large and nicely decorated it is also empty barring a couple of half naked men.  Ho hum, low season I guess.

Lovely weather, and fine skiing among the evergreens.

All too soon it is time to leave though - after our third day of skiing we bundle into the car and head off towards Pamporovo, which Google assures me is three hours away.  Should be there for eight then...


Photos to go with this post can be found here.

So, Sofia

My first time in Bulgaria, the plan being a 7 day skiing odyssey, plus a day spent in the capital before heading to the mountains.
After a 3 hour flight from Luton (WizzAir), and with a 2 hour time difference, Alex and I get to the airport at around 10pm, and are whisked efficiently away by the pre-booked taxi, arriving at the 4 star Hotel Rodina half an hour later.  We manage to convince the giggling receptionists that we want a double room each, rather than just one, and so, time for a beer or three.
There's a convivial piano bar on the top floor with views of the city, and our first experience of the Bulgarian taste in music as the singer does 'Alice' and 'Hotel California' among others - we'll hear both songs live again more than once.
Then at 11:30 - still only 9:30 UK time - we head across the lobby and through a door signed 'Night Club'.  Maybe there will be dancing?  But actually it is empty, and once we sit down a girl asks for 10 Lev each entry fee... but whatever, that is only around 4 Pounds and it is a change of scenery.  Our beers arrive, and then shortly afterwards the first pole dancer comes out - it turns out that 'Night Club' means something a bit different in Eastern Europe.  And though drinking a beer while pretty girls dance isn't a bad way to spend your time, it quickly becomes clear that they really want you to spend money on other things too.  I'll leave it to your imagination as to exactly what...

The next day we go sightseeing, and Sofia is certainly an interesting place.  A lot of it is rather run down, street dogs slink along past decaying buildings, but there is also some fascinating architecture dating from the Ottoman and pre-communist Bulgaria days, and plenty of modern shops and restaurants.  Plain bars are not common, but you can walk into a restaurant (taverna is probably closer) and just drink if you want.
Most impressive are the city's many Churches, we find a tiny 11th century one by the Serdica Metro station, but some are enormous and magnicificent.  We also see a Synagogue, and right next to it a 16 century Mosque.  This is close to the ornate Bath House - currently being restored, there are also the ruins of a turkish bath next to the Mosque, and some even older ruins across the road.  The hot springs that fed the baths are still working, we see a steaming fountain and an array of constantly running taps, the locals queuing to fill plastic bottles - whether to sell or to drink I couldn't say.

A winter Monday turns out to be a bad day for museum hunting though, most seem to be shut either for refurbishment or just because it is Monday.  It's particularly annoying that we can't get into the museum of Socialist Art, after tramping a few miles through the snow to it, though we can at least peer at the numerous massive statues through the fence.  There is also a sparkly new shopping mall nearby where we grab some decent Italian food, and then we take the Metro back (from G.M.Dimitrov station).  The Metro is clean, efficient and very cheap, and soon we're back in the centre, where the temperature is dropping and after a few more failed attempts to get into museums it's time for some beer.  We spend most of the evening in Happy's Bar and Grill near the most impressive Church, the beer is cheap (2.29 Levs or around 95p), and there is a wide range of vaguely meze style food - more on Bulgarian cuisine later.  Finally back to the Rodina piano bar to meet our remaining holiday companions, ready to head off on the road trip tomorrow.