Club Hotel Yanakiev Borovets

... Bulgaria Operations Manager).

Batting for the Bulgaria team are Tedy Koleva (National Development Co-ordinator), Mimi Georgieva (Admin/Projects Support) and Valya Stankovska (translator and all round helper).

Do not be impressed by these titles. We made them up so that they sound great.

It's not often that you can say that everything went to plan on a Christmas box trip day but today it nearly did, which means we are pretty happy. The day started with ...

... of Tony who even came around with a soft white pillow apiece! The train was almost deserted and we had the entire compartment to ourselves for the 21 hour duration of the trip. Everything was going swimmingly until we were ripped from our slumber at 3am by a loud rapping on the door. It was the don announcing that we had reached the Bulgarian border. We were led off the train and stood outside on the dark cold platform with the forty odd other passenger for an ...

... out that little place you like. Titus had a chicken curry and I had tandoori chicken. Our waitress had learned English by working at a travel agency booking airline tickets. We enjoyed chatting with her a bit. Very proud of her country and the improvements that have occured. Fast forward to today, the 22nd. We will leave here in about 2 hours. Scott is coming by to take us to the airport. We really appreciate all the time ...

... t know Bulgaria so well if I ...

... we went to mcdonalds for lunch, just for fun. then we went to the brand new mall of sofia. we went shopping, i bought a skirt on sale from united colors of benniton, and the whole time i was just thinking i can't believe i'm still in bulgaria. sofia is like another country from where i live, with the goats, sheeps, horse and carts, and turkeys and hens that hang out on my street. jamie and i went to a movie in the mall, pirates of the carribbean 2 (it's terrible don't see it ...

... think they get married, have kids and disappear for awhile (except in the parks, which are populated by women pushing prams, young kids, old men, surly teens, and ice-cream peddlers) - and they reemerge to sit in cafes with their friends in their forties - after their kids can now hang out alone in the park. Unfortunately, they go from hot to not in the interim. As for me, nothing terribly exciting happened. On Friday, I had a traditional Bulgarian ...

... land in fresh powder than bashed snow) Poor Alex R took plenty abuse in the afternoon from both Alex L and Terry. (both were fined for friend bashing) Jacqui had a kamikaze moment when she decided that she was tired of being held back and was put back into place but a very troubled but amused Stefan. Tash had an interesting hour or so whilst attempting a drag lift, falling off half way, hiking up the rest of the lift and then not finding her ski's so ...

... so much we couldn't ski properly. The rest of the run was incident free, bar the usual snowboard carnage. As so to lunch, which was taken at Crystal Bar at the bottom of a black run and consisted of the fattest steak sarny (me and C) and the most ridiculous burger (K) you could ask for. Suffice to say that after we washed it down with a beer we weren't exactly feeling svelte for the afternoons skiing. The afternoon's skiing consisted of a very average green run that was ...

... Kit's beer **** producing the kind of smells that make your eyes bleed. A quick check of the map and the decision was made to take a button lift (our first for about 10 years) to a blue run, followed by the longest green in the resort (35km as you asked..... oh, you didn't...). The blue run was very hard work for a group still drunk from last night, and we had to stop for chips half way down, eating them as the snow came down around us. The green was good fun as well ...

As always, there are things that I forgot to mention in yesterday's update, this time about Rila Monastery. While we were there, we bought holy water! Actually, it's bottled drinking water, but the label has Jesus on it, as well as a picture of the monastery itself. Seriously. Also, it cost 3 times as much as regular water, but it was too great to pass. G bought a bottle, but then refused ...