Fear and loathing in Bulgaria

Cavanman's Diary

He was somewhere around the top of the blue slope when the local booze began to kick in. The borderman in Bulgaria was in trouble. He had never stood on skis before but, unless he got down this hill, some way, some how, he was stranded.

And the side of a snow-covered mountain in eastern Europe is not a place you’d want to find yourself stuck – you certainly wouldn’t rely on the locals to put themselves out if it came to a rescue mission (the Banskonians are not the friendliest lot, more of which later).

No, this situation was beginning to seem quite serious. The borderman could feel a trickle of sweat beginning to form inside his pristine new ski jacket.

Now, this column is not in the business of publicly shaming anyone, bar myself, so we will name no names, only to say the borderman operates with impunity around the general Redhills, Belturbet, Newtownbutler area. Think of him more as a state of mind than an actual person – although he is, I’m confident, the latter.

The borderman is a member of a special tribe who suit up in rally gear and talk about things like JCBs and double drop valve pumps, who refer to the handbrake as ‘the wand’ and whose spiritual home is somewhere around Clogher Market. Skiing would not generally be the borderman’s thing.

But here he was, part of a 14-strong party of varied ability, hailing from such exotic and far flung locales as Naples and Knockbride.

Now, full disclosure: I had been put in charge of organising this caper, a cardinal mistake. Things were put on the long finger; in the end, after two successful previous trips to Austria, it was decided to book Bulgaria because, well, we had left it a bit late to get a decent deal anywhere else. And Bulgaria was said to be cheap as chips and fine for the novice skier, a generous way of describing most of us.

Before we go any further, it’s important to state that I have received no gratuities for penning this column. No high-falutin’ website has jumped in to cover my costs for this review of what is said to be one of the leading ski resorts in the region.

I’ve never tried travel writing before but, to be honest, I’ve always liked the thoughts of it – complimentary cocktails, posh hotels, valets doffing their caps and opening doors, beaming staff members tending to your every need. Bankso, let me say straight off, was not like that.

The town is a couple of hours’ drive from Sofia, during which you pass through some very poor areas, a mass of cobbled-together timber-framed houses, which look like, were the winds strong, they’d be mobile homes.

Presumably these were not the digs Irish people put their pensions into back in the golden days of what journo Declan Lynch once heard a man on a train refer to as “the thing” – although, you never know.

Bansko itself is split into two distinct areas. There is the old town, which has its own charm. Think winding streets and alleys dotted with some lovely restaurants, doling out traditional cuisine at reasonable rates. Life ambles along at a slower pace down there, the clarinets and dholak drums of the native musicians providing the soundtrack. The borderman? He doesn’t go in for fancy instruments, unless they are connected to the turbo on his chipped 2.0 Impreza, replete with eight-inch spoiler. No, the borderman made it clear early on that he wouldn’t be darkening the door of the old town, thank you very much.

Then there is the strip, which is safe enough as these places go but seedier than artisan bread. It’s populated by shysters, dodgy boys in leather jackets beckoning tourists into gentleman’s clubs with tinted windows and taxi men whose meters seem to self-adjust depending on how drunk the passengers are.

The streets are lined with little currency kiosks, the exchange rates steeper than the black runs. The people? Mostly joyless, making little effort to converse in the foreign tongue. The drink is watered down, the volume is hiked up.

Here, the borderman was right at home.

“Zdraveite (hello),” I heard a local greeting him in one of the bars. “Aye,” said the borderman, “and a dash of white.”

You see, the borderman wasn’t there to ski, per se. Yes, he looked the part, having splashed the cash in one of Regatta’s weekly 70% off final clearance bonanza sales but it was a case of ‘all the gear and no idea’.

Still, this is a man who knows how to enjoy himself. His attitude to the skiing trip put me in mind of someone who once told me that the Fleadh Cheoil was the best week of the year “bar the oul’ music”. The skiing, for him, was incidental, a minor inconvenience.

But anyway, here he was. It was day three when he decided to change his altitude, by-passing the hour-long queue at the gondola in favour of a taxi, which brought him up a winding mountain road and deposited him safely at a bar at the top of the aforementioned blue run.

The borderman has certain mantras he lives by – if she’s not red, leave her in the shed; bend the rules, rule the bends, and so on – but he hadn’t thought of the truest of all: What goes up, unfortunately, must come down.

Reluctantly, the borderman skulled the last drop of his Kamenitza lager and hopped on his skis. The gradient was mild – most football pitches are steeper to allow for water run-off, not that the borderman would waste his time watching lads chasing a bag of wind – but still, for a newbie, this was daunting.

A posse of out-riders accompanied him and, for the first 100 yards or so, he slid along slowly, the look on his face in stark contrast to the ‘NO FEAR’ sticker on the back window of his car. But bordermen are nothing if not cute and this one had a plan.

After about five excruciating minutes, with the trickiest parts still to come, the borderman spotted a ski ambulance passing, its red cross on white background fluttering in the wind, and, in a flash, he tumbled to the deck like Ronaldo, howling for assistance.

The skimobile stopped abruptly and helped him up, strapping him to the back like Hannibal Lecter for safety – who’s safety was not clear. And off they motored, over the horizon, the borderman prone, locked in place, blue sky overhead and white snow beneath.

By the time I and the rest of the party made it down, he was safely ensconced on a high stool in the Happy End bar, locked in a different place you could say, regaling fellow tourists about his epic descent, phone in his hand, already googling destinations for next year.

Would he recommend Bansko? Yes, he decided, he would surely – but don’t bother with the skis.