Bulgaria Exceeds Winter Tourism Expectations with 25% Surge in Foreign Visitors
Bulgaria's winter tourism season has surpassed expectations, with a remarkable 25% increase in foreign visitors compared to initial projections
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A state of emergency has been declared after hurricane-like winds hit Bulgaria's biggest ski resort of Bansko on Thursday, toppling trees and roofs.
Fire brigades, police and volunteers will pool their efforts to bring the situation back to normal, the press center of the municipality announced.
The storm comes just a day after the winter resort opened its ski runs and ten days before the official inauguration of the new season, with officials promising no hikes in prices and a host of new bonuses.
Bansko, the second-cheapest resort for British skiers in the world, was recently named the winter capital on the Balkans.
The little town bordering Pirin National Park, about 160 kilometers south of Bulgaria's capital Sofia, offers a stark but nice contrast between the cobbled streets and churches of the old town and hundreds of millions of euros poured into hotels, ski runs and bright blue gondola bubbles in its modern part.
Supervising all this is the roughly 2,800-meter Todorka peak.
The formerly off-the-beaten-path destination has recently gone mainstream, but it is very rarely that tourists see the vistas doom-sayers warn against - construction cranes and gaudy mutrobaroque hotels, favored by the nouveau riche and organized crime mobsters, known as mutri, with which they try to prove their wealth.
Tourists need to spend no more than 25 euros a night in those hotels, which exemplify Bansko's ambitions best – quite chic, but without the ridiculous attempts to be consmopolitan often found at Bulgarian resorts.
The old town, where the prices are lower even than the capital Sofia, is a collection of ski and souvenir shops with cozy, dimly lit taverns and restaurants. The alternatives are the pubs, frequented by British, Irish and Greek tourists, who, together with the Russians, have until recently been the driving force of Bansko's prosperity.
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