Skiing In Bulgaria - Part 1 (1/3) By Steve Rudd

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3). Part 2.

I could have thought of worst places to be, seeing in the New Year, as the last second of 2005 ticked over into 2006. Happy New Year indeed. For the best part of the past ten years myself and my friends have contented ourselves with heading into the town centre of Driffield every December 31st for one of the few nights of the year when it genuinely hustles and bustles. To drink away New Year's Eve before joining the crowds around the towering Christmas tree in the Market Place in anticipation of the countdown to the New Year, which is routinely followed by a hearty rendition of good old Auld Lang Syne.

But after doing that for almost ten years, we decided we'd rather be elsewhere for the New Year. The only downside of going away was missing our respective families, but we were only away for a week, which flew by in any case. So, where did we decide to go? And why? Well, a great many people set their hearts on a little 'winter sun' at this time of year, but we felt like an adventure, and after my two mates - Matt and Simon - had indulged in their first real extreme 'sport' earlier on in 2005 whilst in Crete (where they bungee-jumped, while I feigned nausea on the wayside), we collectively settled on the idea of going skiing.

None of us three had skied in any way, shape or form before (other than Simon who had spent a little time on a dry ski slope), but that fact failed to faze us. By going somewhere relatively cheap, we wouldn't feel as though we'd wasted our money if a) we weren't very good, and/ or b) we didn't enjoy it as much as he'd hoped we would. After scouring the internet, Bulgaria came up as the most enticing and financially viable option for a week's worth of skiing over the New Year period.

Some of the ski resorts in Romania are alleged to be even cheaper, but the purpose-built resort of Borovets in the Rila mountain range of Bulgaria, south of the country's capital of Sofia, suited us just fine. Bulgaria is two hours ahead of Britain, so when we arrived at our lodgings at the Victoria Hotel at around 11pm on New Year's Eve, it was still 9pm back home. After a tiring day of getting from A to B, and from home to our glorious home-from-home, we felt like going straight to bed and to sleep.

First things first, we had to be up at 7am the next morning for the first tentative day of Ski School. Still, it was New Year's Eve and not seeing in the New Year would have been a cop-out, however tired we might have professed to being. What's more, the hotel had laid on a gala meal for all new arrivals, which we took full advantage of and which was gorgeous: a four-course extravaganza, topped with wine and champagne. At ten to twelve, one of the waitresses in the hotel's basement restaurant turned up the volume on the TV that sat like a Cheshire cat on the well-stocked bar.

It all sounded Bulgarian to us, as a TV anchorman talked us into the New Year, at which point the staff of the hotel began to rapturously clap (if I remember rightly, given the next morning's mild hangover and multiple flashbacks that mixed fact with fiction to a thoroughly disturbing extent), before everybody in the cosy restaurant clinked champagne glasses with one another and wished each other 'Happy New Year.'

Continued ... next page (2/3)

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