Day 1 - The Journey

Today is the first day of my trip to Bankso in Bulgaria. I travelled here from Heathrow Terminal 5 on a BA flight with my partner, Mario. The 08:30am flight meant getting out of bed before 5am right after some heavy New Year’s celebrations – not an enjoyable task. Fortunately the hike to the airport went well and a full fat fry-up at the impressive T5 helped lighten the blow. I’m afraid the same cannot be said for the rest of the journey to “the middle of nowhere” as Mario put it. We somehow found ourselves shovelled into a dodgy taxi at Sofia airport en route to the bus station. The driver-cum-tour-guide was nice enough but he wouldn’t shut up. Meanwhile the meter was clocking up like it was out of control. It was literally costing us about £2 a minute to hear how we were passing the University building and the President’s house. The final tally was about £35 which I think means we were well and truly ‘had’. This was in stark contrast to the death-bus to Bansko from Ovcha Kupel bus station, which cost £6 each. Not bad for a two and a half hour journey although the bus driver was on his mobile phone for most of it whilst driving through snow. The main problem with getting the bus was that we had no idea where it was heading for or indeed when we had reached the resort. This was thanks to all signage being in Bulgarian. Even the bus driver had to write “12” on a piece of paper to tell us how much to pay when we got on. Herein lays the first boo-boo. We thought we had reached Bansko when we reached civilisation and pretty lights after a few hours. I asked a man with a bulldog dressed in a pink coat on the bus – “is this Bansko?” He replied with a convincing “yes” so we got off and watched the bus drive away.

So Mario says “how do we get to the hotel then?” as we stand in the deserted bus station. Not an unreasonable question given it was dark and freezing cold. Here I have to admit my preparation was poor at best. I booked an apartment via a website – GoVisitBulgaria.com. I didn’t receive any confirmation following the booking so I sent them an email to check. I got a reply saying it was all confirmed but nothing in the way of arrival instructions. Not a problem, I thought, and diligently printed the name of the accommodation and a handy Google map. According to my calculations it should have been a manageable walk through the town and in a matter of minutes we would be warming up in our new home for the next week. Sadly my plans didn’t account for man with bulldog feeding us duff information. We walked out from the bus station to see a road sign saying “Bansko – 7km”. Oh crap. Through a minute stroke of luck there was a solitary taxi waiting nearby with the world’s smallest boot ready to charge us another £13 for the final leg of the journey. I say this was a minute stroke of luck because the driver spoke zero English and despite showing him the map he had never heard of our accommodation.

I should have realised this was a bad sign but ever the optimist I decided the map was quite straightforward and signalled for him to take us to Bankso where I figured we would be able to find the place. At this point Mario was far from impressed. We drove through the town looking for Cedar Lodge III when he spotted it… “Cedar Lodge”. Out of the taxi we jumped and down a beaten track we slid. No sign of any reception though. I walked into the building to find it was just apartments with nobody around. A very cold and unhappy Mario was now giving me the death stare. Off I popped to the next building where I found a lovely woman who spoke a bit of English. She phoned a friend to ask for directions to Cedar Lodge III. Mario, standing some way away, developed super-hearing and was able to hear her say “you are at the wrong place. Are you walking? It’s quite a walk – about 20 minutes down the hill, near the clock tower”. That went down like a lead balloon. He grabbed both suitcases and stomped off into the distance without a word. This continued for some time until he raged “this is the worst holiday ever. I wish I was back in London”.

To round up this tale of woe things got progressively worse. We walked around for another 20 minutes on a wild goose chase looking for the apartment when we finally found the place. However once again there was no reception and nobody to greet us. We managed to find a rude security guard who understood a little English but left us waiting for 35 minutes while he walked around seemingly doing nothing. Eventually he passed me his mobile phone so I could chat to a woman in pigeon English about getting the keys to our apartment. It turns out she had no idea we were coming and was off work for a few days. She was very apologetic and said she would get the security guard to take us to our room. Another 20 minutes later he finally delivered. The delivery in question was a freezing cold studio with no working radiators. Thankfully three electric heaters placed had been placed around to warm us up after an hour or so.

The final task for the night was to find food. We went to several restaurants, all of which were full, before we were ushered into a rather plain looking place. Naturally we had to wait a very long time before we got some food – this seems to be the Bulgarian way. It was ok… a bit of lottery really because we didn’t understand much of the menu. Mario asked the waiter “what is the difference between these three chicken dishes?” to which he replied “I don’t know”. So he picked one at random but when it arrived it was actually pork!

Fingers crossed tomorrow will be better – I’m hoping when we get to the slopes it will all be worth it. There hasn’t been a great deal of snow and a few of the lifts are closed but I’m hoping that won’t stop us having fun.