Bulgaria Ski discussion board

Hi

I know you’ve organised a private ski instructor for the skiers in our group, but what have you arranged for the three of us who are snowboarding? Private instructor to ourselves, or just join the normal ski school?? I’m not bothered, but would just like to know. (kids keep asking)

Also what have you arranged for the kit hire. I’ve read on this site it can be a bit of a rush on the first day, and they advise getting to the hire place early. Do you keep the same boots/boards all week, or different ones each day?

Tim ?

I've no idea about your instructors, but having snowboarded there for the past few years, renting equipment each time I can let you know what happens with the hire of boards etc.

Boarding in Bulgaria is no where near as popular as skiing is. The queues on the first day are immense for the skiers, first come first served. It is a case of joining a line and waiting until you get to the front to be assigned your skis and poles for the week. The same is expected for the boarders, except they're in a different room than the skis and there never has been a queue. So you can skip past all the skiers queuing up on the stairs, while they mutter at you on the way past and keep an eye on you to check you're not queue jumping! Then into the room to get your board and boots, not the best, but the boards slide at varying speeds depending on how well they've looked after them, so that's what you want. Each board has a number, this numbered board is yours for the week and they mark it on the back of your ski pass. You just drop it off at the end of the day and pick up your shoes that you've probably left in the space where you got your boots from earlier that day too (in the same room). So if your Bulgarian is as good as their English, when you go along at the beginning of the next day, they will look on the back of your pass for your board number without having to engage you in conversation and they can carry on their chain smoking.

If you're still around the 7th-14th, we'll have a beer then. There's a huge group of us going out this year, last year we all had Lokomotiv Plovdiv shirts and my tour name for reasons known only to the person who thought of this name was "Roger"???? This year it'll be Plovdom and we've all got Plovdiv's latest shirt, so look out, we'll be the ones in Black and White!