A few weeks into my stay in Sofia I decided to make a brief trip up to Bansko in southwest Bulgaria. After initially being a bit slow on the uptake, some very clever Ponzi schemers businessmen realized that if you take a beautiful, pristine mountain and put it through an intensive process of commercialization and development in order to advertise how pristine it is, you can sucker a lot of people into investing in real estate in order to build prefab condominiums that no one will want to move into because the area is suddenly very overdeveloped.
All of this is not to say that I resisted the urge to go on a ski trip – to ski, and also to see more of the country.
Upon arriving and checking into my outrageously cheap hotel, I went in search of a ski rental shop. Midway along the fifteen minute walk between the hotel and the base of the ski slopes I walked by a mehana, the Bansko variant of which bears as much resemblance to an authentic old Bulgarian tavern as Cracker Barrel does to an authentic old Southern diner. The town was full of them, most with touts outside trying to lure in unsuspecting Westerners. This one was no exception.
“Hello my friend!” a middle-aged Bulgarian greeted me. I nodded and mumbled something. “Would you like to eat?” he said. “I will give you a free drink.”
“No thank you,” I said. “I’ve already eaten.” (This was a lie.)
“Come on my friend, I will give you wine–or beer! Have a drink! We serve traditional Bulgarian foods!”
I decided to leverage the situation in my favor. “Maybe later,” I said. “Right now I need to rent skis. Do you know a good place?”
He brightened. “Yes, of course. But you do not want to go to the ski lift. If you rent there it will be very expensive. But there is an excellent shop around the corner.” He led me to the side of his restaurant to a cramped, dim wooden shed with a meager assortment of cheap-looking skis. In a moment of naivete, I thanked him and went in.
“What does he want?” the worker in the shop asked.
“ENGLISH!” the tavern worker answered with a curious sharpness before catching himself and turning to me with a smile. “This man speaks English. He needs skis.” He turned and left me in the shop. Before I knew what was happening I had been smoothly convinced to rent a pair of mediocre skis and cheap boots for several days. I left my driver’s license as a deposit and uneasily exited the shop. As I gained distance from the haze-inducing aura of the tavern-worker’s salesmanship I began to question my choice.
I walked on to the base of the ski slope and the ludicrous agglomeration of ski rental shops clustered around it. Immediately upon entering the first shop and seeing the price list–and the very respectable skis being rented out–I realized I had made a very big mistake. The first shop, I realized, made its profits not by being further away from the slopes and thus keeping its prices lower, but by being further away from the slopes and thus snaring tourists before they encounter the broader market of ski rentals. I had been suckered in effortlessly, but I reasoned that, having not paid and not used the skis there was, in theory, no reason why I could not cancel my rental. And then I remembered that I had left my license at the shop, and suddenly I doubted my strength of will to resist the inevitable pressuring I would experience. I paced around for a few minutes before finally gathering the resolve necessary and walking into the shop.
Sitting at the desk was an old man who hadn’t been there before. After ten minutes of gesturing I finally communicated to him that I didn’t want skis after all but would very much like to have my identification back. Relieved to be rid of me, he complied without argument, and I considered myself lucky beyond reckoning.
The next day I found myself skiing down a narrow route that went along a chair lift. At one slightly technical bottleneck I wound up standing next to two older British men. The first one went down the section smoothly. The second hesitated and turned to me, indicating that I ought to go first. I made it down and paused to rest for a moment, and the first man and I chatted as we waited for the second to come down.
“So where are you from?” he asked.
“America.”
“Oh…so how long are you here for?”
“A few days.”
He stared at me. “And…you came from where in America, exactly?” he asked in disbelief.
“Oh no,” I said, “I’ve been in Sofia for a few weeks. I just came up here for a short trip.” Anxious to avoid an overly long explanation of myself, I turned the tables. “And what about you?”
“I’m British.”
“And what do you do?”
“Well, I learned to ski while in the Royal Marines. Now I’m in asbestos removal.”
I pondered this. “And…are you here on holiday?”
“No, no,” the man said very seriously, “I’m spending the season here. I wanted to work on my off-piste skiing.”
I paused to absorb what he had just said. A variety of burning questions came to mind: Why are you doing that? Why do you consider that a worthwhile way to spend a half year of your life? Does that really have any practical application to any other aspect of your life? What’s so important about off-piste skiing? Doesn’t that seem like a pretty over-privileged way to spend your winter?
And then I stopped and considered how I might answer those same questions about how I myself was currently spending my year. All in a moment I understood the numerous silent, quizzical looks I’d received over the course of the year. Suddenly I felt uncomfortable. “Well it’s been nice meeting you,” I said. “Good luck with that.”
And I turned and skied away, absorbed in self-justification.
