Bansko has again attracted the interest in the foreign media. This time, British daily The Guardian wrote on January 13 about the developments, challenges and future prospects of Bulgaria’s most talked-about ski resort.
The journalist Felice Hardy describes how much Bulgaria has changed since her last visit 15 years ago, and the mountain in particular. “Gone are the ancient lifts and long queues, gone, too, are the cheap hotels with bathplugs that don’t fit and cold spaghetti for breakfast,” she writes. “Instead, I find a state-of-the-art lift system outside the door of my five-star hotel, a bedroom that wouldn’t look out of place in St Moritz, a healthy breakfast, and a thirtysomething apres-ski scene.”
Firstly, we are not sure which queue exactly the journalist joined, as the permanently long queues at the ski drags and lifts are one of the primary worries of Bulgarian skiers visiting Bansko. Presumably also, the hotel in question is the Kempinski, which is located right outside of the electric gondola that takes the skiers up the mountain. Indeed, for a five-star hotel, not much else could be expected but a state-of-art bedroom and a healthy breakfast.
Hardy describes Bansko as a quaint town dating back to mediaeval times, which, over the past two years, has been transformed into a winter destination “that can truly compete with the Alps – at a fraction of the cost”. Indeed Bansko has seen a major transformation in recent years. However, the prices are something that mislead many people.
A night at a three-star hotel in Bansko during peak season starts at 50-60 euro. For comparison, a night at the Italian Val di Fassa in a three-star hotel starts from 36 euro, and in the French Val Thorens, from 50 euros. Thus, that accommodation prices in Bansko are cheaper than in other European resorts can easily be called a myth.
The Guardian article continues with saying that “other tired ski destinations in Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia have failed to progress since the fall of communism, largely because of their inability to attract the multi-million pound investment required to build a modern lift system. But Ulen, a wealthy Sofia-based investment group, took up the cudgel and bravely built a 130 million euro lift system along with a new ‘village’ at the foot of the mountain with luxury hotels and apartments”.
A note on Ulen: it is true that Ulen has indeed invested a large amount of money into the resort, bringing it up to par with its modern European counterparts. However, it also hold a monopoly over the ski facilities – drags, lifts, ski schools and so on. This does not allow for competition, which, in turn, has been one of the reasons the daily ski pass doubled in price to 50 leva (25 euro) in 2005, from 25 leva in 2004. For comparison, an adult daily pass in Val Thores is 38 euros – not that much more expensive than Bansko and with a local population to support such prices.
Hardy acknowledges as a downside the fact that the whole town is a building site, with cranes everywhere you look. “But the gleaming new Doppelmayr gondola takes 25 minutes to transport you up to the start of the 65km ski area and a further network of half a dozen modern chairlifts rising to 2500m. I never saw a queue during my visit and the slopes were blissfully empty. Even in high season, the area attracts considerably fewer skiers than the big-name resorts in other countries.”
Again, we are not sure exactly what time of year The Guardian’s journalist visited Bansko, but according to personal experiences and those of other fellow skiers and snowboarders, the incredibly long queues during December and March are often a major put-off.
Example, in December 2006 (when skiing was possible only on Plateau 1 and 2 due to lack of snow), not more than five runs could be used, should one have decided to buy a half-day pass.
The half-day pass is for from 12.30pm to 5.30pm, and it can only be bought after 12.30pm, as the computer system does not allow issuing passes in advance. Thus, on December 29, waiting at the gondola for a pass took about an hour, making the arrival time at the Plateau piste about 2.30pm. Moreover, one should make his/her way back down from Plateau at about 4pm, as the lift back to Bunderishka Polyana apparently stops taking people at about 4.30pm. What a thrilling skiing experience!
Hardy concludes her article: “The skiing is surprisingly good, with the lower runs through the trees and open bowl skiing at the top of the area, which during my visit offered fresh tracks in deep powder. There is scope for enlarging the ski area further to something on a par with a medium-sized Austrian resort”.
Back in the village, most of the apres-ski is provided by 100 traditional taverns called mehanas, Hardy writes. “Competition is keen – the resort’s population is only 10 000 – and ‘greeters’ dressed in national costume loiter outside the larger ones (mehanas) beckoning tourists to enter. My chosen mehana had an open fire, red and black checked tablecloths, striped Turkish-style rugs and upholstery, live folk music and a good selection of Bulgarian wines. The menu sounded promising – I chose honey roast lamb for 4.90 pounds sterling, in preference to the tripe soup and diced liver soup (66 pence each), but my lamb turned out to be only slightly more appetising than the soups and I was reminded that Bulgaria hasn’t changed in every respect,” she writes, concluding the article.
We take it that The Guardian did not like the traditional Bulgarian tripe soup (shkembe chorba). Let’s hope it was a recipe mistake and only in that particular mehana, for Bulgarians plan to proudly contribute shkembe chorba to the culinary variety of European Union cuisine. But we’ll leave that for another time.
