Batkivshchyna in winter
The idea to start skiing this particular winter came belatedly, as always. The New Year in snowy hills and heavy icicles has always been traditional, and it is also traditional to travel somewhere far away from your home.
The most pleasant way to spend the New Year is to bury your face in a bunch of snow and, after resting for a couple of moments, get back on your feet and continue to bawl: “Happy New Year! ” and randomly shoot fireworks at the neighbor's windows. It's bad luck that in the Crimea, traditionally, there is no snow. And there are temperatures from 0 to 5 with an average breeze, which turns being outside into a dreary freezing. So we needed snow.
The range of snowfields starts from the far reaches of Central Ukraine and ends at will, either in the steppes of Finland or on the massive slopes of Spain. You can, of course, on the advice of the Crimean old-timers, go to Mount Ai-Petri at 1234m high, or cross the Angarsk Pass. All this is a 2-hour drive from Sevastopol and, having stocked up on a pre-checked basin or an unnecessary rubber tire, you can spend the weekend with a breeze, risking making yourself a couple of fractures on winding slides. People here rarely remember skis, usually only those who have already bought these skis and try to roll them out regularly every season, regardless of the thickness of the snow cover.
In general, leaving the Crimea suggested itself.
With annual vacation reserves of more than 1000 euros, you can try yourself on budget slopes in Bulgaria, Poland, and Slovakia. Specifically, I didn’t try myself there, but when flipping through popular sites and counting in a column of 1000 euros, this was the necessary minimum so that a standard family could roll out the required week on skis. If this amount is not available, then you will have to stay within Ukraine. Moreover, you will have to try very hard to find something suitable, because lately the amount of 1000 euros has not been embarrassing to request in our homeland, while I propose slightly different standards than in the European Union.
In this amount, I included the cost of travel, accommodation and basic food.
Since the New Year was on the nose, and the required amount was not accumulated in the bins, the option of resting in the motherland suggested itself. This is where beginners could ride, so that it would be easier to get there, and there would be more entertainment and more comfortable houses. The question is serious.
Many people prefer not to participate in such mega-competitions to find the “bluebird” at all, but jump into a charter Boeing and tear their claws to Turkey, Egypt, Dubai, and from there they laugh at the poor fellows looking for snow entertainment, spitting aside with seed skins and drinking All of these are "included" drinks.
It was possible to find out that there are not so many articulate reviews about the vacation of a skier with his family in the vastness of Ukraine. As soon as someone is going abroad, then right there on the pages of famous sites there are sketches and vivid photos for memory. Everyone knows how to get there, in which hotel to stay and what to do in general. On the territory of Ukraine, everyone travels under the cover of night. No constructive feedback for you, no pictures from the scene. All quietly and without emotion. There are some descriptions of how nearby regions travel at distances not exceeding 200 km, drink vodka and fry kebabs and everyone likes everything. But, if in an hour I can get to any forest zone in my Sevastopol, fry everything that is fried there and play football or a throwaway fool against the background of swallowing liters of fire-breathing liquid, then is it worth it for representatives of Western Ukraine to go here and spend at is this serious money?
So I had to be guided by information sites that give only basic information with 50% data accuracy and without any feedback from living beings.
Last time we were in the village of Yaremcha, Ivano-Frankivsk region. Quite a popular and active place for amateur skiers. The rest was not bad, but the 2nd time I did not want to go there. There is Dragobat with its serious focus on the ski mecca. There is quite acceptable for skiing the village of Slavske. Well, the well-known Bukovel, crossed out from the list even during the first version of compilation.
From less well-known sources, I received information that people also ski in the Lviv region. Attention was offered to the village of Rozluch and the village of Uzhok, located on the Uzhok pass, the border zone between the Lviv and Transcarpathian regions. For silence and unpretentiousness, the village of Rozluch was chosen as a starting point for our family's ski start. (When we later passed Uzhok, the locals, when asked about skiing, only shrugged their shoulders).
