Bulgaria Ski discussion board

In a month I'll be off to Bulgaria for the fourth time, Borovets for the second time and I can tell you honestly that only once have I ever seen anything that maybe was related to organised crime.

I was having a coffee in the Murgavets cafe in Pamporovo just as the sun was setting. I finished up and walked over to the door to the balcony/viewing area to take a photo as the mountain was looking particularly nice. As I got to the door, a large gentleman wearing black trousers, a black top and black bomber jacket was approaching it from the outside coming in. He saw me, opened the door for me and stepped back. As he did this, his jacket opened and I saw a glint of silver. I looked down and realised it was a gun in its holster. I must have taken a double take as he looked to see what I had noticed. We both looked up at the same time, made eye contact and smiled at each other, my smile was a bit nervous, his was reserved but warm. I stepped out, nodded a thankyou and he went in. The door closed. THAT'S IT! And I can assure you I wasn't walking around the resort with my eyes closed or heading to my bed at 9. I was out there until stupid o'clock in the morning and saw some pretty funky things, but nothing more illegal than you'd get anywhere in the UK and nothing that suggested that gansters were involved in any way, shape or form.

I actually figured at the time that he must have been a guard or policeman ... remember, Britian is the exception rather than the rule when it comes to arming security services, it's only by reading this board that I've started to suspect he was something a wee bit more sinister ... and maybe that's the problem here ... maybe we're seeing Tony Soprano's when all we're looking at is a grumpy fat bugger with a cigar who happens to run a bus company or taxi firm or whatever business he has out there that would mean you come into contact with him! Maybe we're just looking at bouncers and other workers who, with a bit of imagination, can easily turn into Cosa Nostra foot soldiers. Any pub, club, bar, lap dancing joint, anywhere, has its seedy corners that hide seedy people, but they're more likely to be customers than pimps, more likely to be the dancers friends or boyfriends looking out for them than the Godfather.

A few years ago I was in Las Vegas for a couple of weeks, a town famous for its Mafia connections, and yet not one person I talked to ever considered it. Las Vegas is a leisure resort that wants your money, same as the places we head to in Bulgaria. If anything was happening there that scared people away it'd mean the money men would be left owning a very expensive ghost town. They won't let this happen!! They're not stupid enough to bite the hand that feeds them, and feeds them very well. Therefore, anything underhand that keeps the resort ticking over (I'm not denying it exists) is so clandestine as to be invisible to us tourists.

Honestly, I promise, I swear, you won't see anything out there that's make you want to run screaming back to the airport, or even back to your room. Your families will be safe (would this even be a consideration if you were going to Vegas? No, thought not). I'm not saying it's a crime free utopia, you should be as careful and as vigilant as any other holiday resort, but it's not, NOT, full of gansters!

I hope this sparks a bit of debate, if you've managed to read this far, (I'm a part time writer, so this was good practice) but keep it clean please! If you swear we'll have to shoot you.