 Poster: A snowHead
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The answer's in this interesting feature in today's Independent, by Stephen Wood:
Bargain Balkans: Head east for the slopes
So ... is it Serbia, Bulgaria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Romania, Slovenia, Kosovo or Turkey?
Useful clue: only six of the seven countries above are named in the article!
Stephen Wood's text extensively quotes Serbian-born Stevan Popovich, who's worked in the UK travel trade for 20 years and says:
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| In Xxxxxx, as in Xxxxxx, skiing instructors have to get a university degree first, before doing their ski training, which helps to make Xxxxxxx an ideal learn-to-ski destination. |
Maybe other European countries make this demand, but it's new to me. Anyone know?
Would you like your ski instructor to be university-educated, or do you look for other special attributes?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I don't know about having a degree, but I certainly prefer to be taught by someone who is intelligent and quick witted as they need to be able to react to rapidly changing situations and to be able to diagnose the needs of wildly different clients - and to be fair have not yet been taught a ski instructor who wasn't. I had my first ski lessons in Serbia from a good, extremely pleasant young woman instructor with a university education who had been part of their national ski team. However, even so she seriously misjudged my abilities and took me far too early to a slope I couldn't cope with, and that's had a long-lasting confidence effect on me.
I must say the overall experience in Serbia was good - the local people in Kopaonik were very helpful and pleasant and the resort had obviously had tons spent on its development. I want to return there at least once and explore those slopes that then were beyond me, having only skied two of them.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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I am shocked to read that the "senior product manager for Central/ Eastern Europe" is not aware of the fact that pistes have been clear from NATO bombs for two years in the best Serbian resort.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Do you know that as a fact? What's the authoritative source on piste bombs?
Incidentally, the point you're referring to seems to be in the main text of the article by Stephen Wood:
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| The skiing was pleasant and peaceful: the part of the slopes on which mines had been dropped by Nato aircraft during the Kosovo war was closed (as it still is, I believe). |
He's therefore expressing uncertainty on that point.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| David Goldsmith wrote: |
| He's therefore expressing uncertainty on that point. |
It could have been easily verified. In the article under 'More information', there is the link to the English site of the resort.
Just a few clicks and you find this:
http://www.eng.infokop.net/news/krcmar-in-function-9.html
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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kerekip, I don't understand. Who are you saying is the "senior product manager for Central/ Eastern Europe"?
The text quoted above is from the journalist.
The text you've linked to says:
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After 8 full years on of the best ski tracks on Kopaonik is in function. Upper part of track is easy and the best part is from entering the forest until you get to middle-station after that comes very steep part but has a lot of vegetations so you have to avoid them during skiing.
It is disordered mostly because it hasn’t been in use for so many years do to cluster bombs which were dropped there during the NATO bombing in 1999. so you should be very careful and look out for vegetation.
Of the record, from workers we found out that the end of construction Duboka should be in February. |
Maybe you're right that the cluster bombs have been cleared, since it would be surprising if the resort exposed its guests to potential death, but their text doesn't explicity say that the bombs have been cleared.
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David Goldsmith, you are right, this text is from the journalist. I was reading the article too fast.
The piste was cleared in 2006, and it was in the news at that time (both in local and in European). Unfortunately, I have deleted all the newsletters, RSS feeds on my computer that proves this.
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I agree that the writer should never have raised the point, if the bombs definitely had been cleared that long ago. It's such a serious issue that a fact-check was kind of ... important.
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