nny porches decorated with nicely sculpted porticos. And then unmistakably for the trained eye, voil?… the palaces of the nowadays Bulgaria rich. Minimalist simplicity is not their thing. Some of their owners didn’t live enough to raise children and grand children among the balustraded terraces tastefuWhenever my buddy Johnny Karloff looks into something written about Borovets he is flying off the handle. “Look at those dumb heads. What is with them to write the same garbage over and over again? Borovets is the oldest Bulgarian ski resort, right.., so what? When you go skiing do you want a 1948 vintage chair lift hanging from a rusted cable? Borovets is located in pristine pine woods and the air is healthy and pollution free.” Johnny goes on mocking some hotel flyer. “It better be, with all the cigarette smoke and alcohol in your system, you don’t want to inhale tail pipe exhaust walking back to your new ski apartment at 2 a.m., do you?”

Unlike Bansko, Borovets is not an old Bulgarian village exhibiting its new ski resort and property investment ambitions. Numerous new developments and ski condos are going up as we speak but everything is more spread out and subdued. And there are the old bourgeois villas from the time when it was called Chamkoria, the time when Simeon’s dad Boris and his grand daddy Ferdinand were running a place called the Kingdom of Bulgaria. Sometimes difficult to spot, these mountain chalets, hidden between the huge pine trees, feature cozy private apartments, sunny porches decorated with nicely sculpted porticos. And then unmistakably for the trained eye, voil?… the palaces of the nowadays Bulgaria rich. Minimalist simplicity is not their thing. Some of their owners didn’t live enough to raise children and grand children among the balustraded terraces tasteful

age chair lift hanging from a rusted cable? Borovets is located in pristine pine woods and the air is healthy and pollution free.” Johnny goes on mocking some hotel flyer. “It better be, with all the cigarette smoke and alcohol in your system, you don’t want to inhale tail pipe exhaust walking back to your new ski apartment at 2 a.m., do you?”

Unlike Bansko, Borovets is not an old Bulgarian village exhibiting its new ski resort and property investment ambitions. Numerous new developments and ski condos are going up as we speak but everything is more spread out and subdued. And there are the old bourgeois villas from the time when it was called Chamkoria, the time when Simeon’s dad Boris and his grand daddy Ferdinand were running a place called the Kingdom of Bulgaria. Sometimes difficult to spot, these mountain chalets, hidden between the huge pine trees, feature cozy private apartments, sunny porches decorated with nicely sculpted porticos. And then unmistakably for the trained eye, voil?… the palaces of the nowadays Bulgaria rich. Minimalist simplicity is not their thing. Some of their owners didn’t live enough to raise children and grand children among the balustraded terraces tastefu

your new ski apartment at 2 a.m., do you?”

Unlike Bansko, Borovets is not an old Bulgarian village exhibiting its new ski resort and property investment ambitions. Numerous new developments and ski condos are going up as we speak but everything is more spread out and subdued. And there are the old bourgeois villas from the time when it was called Chamkoria, the time when Simeon’s dad Boris and his grand daddy Ferdinand were running a place called the Kingdom of Bulgaria. Sometimes difficult to spot, these mountain chalets, hidden between the huge pine trees, feature cozy private apartments, sunny porches decorated with nicely sculpted porticos. And then unmistakably for the trained eye, voil?… the palaces of the nowadays Bulgaria rich. Minimalist simplicity is not their thing. Some of their owners didn’t live enough to raise children and grand children among the balustraded terraces tastefu

d bourgeois villas from the time when it was called Chamkoria, the time when Simeon’s dad Boris and his grand daddy Ferdinand were running a place called the Kingdom of Bulgaria. Sometimes difficult to spot, these mountain chalets, hidden between the huge pine trees, feature cozy private apartments, sunny porches decorated with nicely sculpted porticos. And then unmistakably for the trained eye, voil?… the palaces of the nowadays Bulgaria rich. Minimalist simplicity is not their thing. Some of their owners didn’t live enough to raise children and grand children among the balustraded terraces tastefunny porches decorated with nicely sculpted porticos. And then unmistakably for the trained eye, voil?… the palaces of the nowadays Bulgaria rich. Minimalist simplicity is not their thing. Some of their owners didn’t live enough to raise children and grand children among the balustraded terraces tastefully adorned with golden lions and gargoyles. Mortality rate tends to run high among the palace owners, shot on purpose or by accident. Bad luck? The Borovets tourist guides are clueless on the subject. (Click here for the Borovets map)

Borovets is a short one-hour drive away from Sofia airport on a two-line well maintained road following the Iskar river for the most part. Then you enter the vast potato landscape of the Samokov plain. There is little to see in Samokov with the exception of the old Bairakli mosque. It’s a jewel built in the 15th century during the Ottoman times and reconstructed in the 19th century by local craftsmen. The exterior and interiors are lavishly decorated in the architectural tradition of that time with a spiral minaret pointing into the sky. Looking around that marvelous structure one can not help but feel regret for the past glory of the town. It seems the wild Ottoman era marked an apogee and from there on it was all downhill for the local builders: ugly defaced five-storey concrete buildings, peeling paint, cubical nightmare of unhuman proportions.

Drive