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Not long ago, The Guardian wrote that our most famous mountain resort of Bansko was among the top five most attractive winter destinations for the European tourists.

The small, picturesque mountain town, the article reads, boasts a huge inflow of investments and rapid development of the infrastructure. In addition, the author makes it a point that Bansko offers excellent conditions for recreation not only in winter, but throughout the whole year. In fact, with its luxurious hotels and high quality services Bansko stands on a par with the most famous ski resorts in Switzerland, France or Sweden.

This year's winter season in the resort was officially opened on December 15. A whole constellation of top skiers including Janica Kostelic, Kjetil Andre Aamodt and Marc Girardelli attended the dazzling ceremony.

The most enthusiastic skiers and mountaineers have already tried the excellent ski pistes. The concessionaire, Ulen JSC, has increased the number of snow cannons from seventy-five to a hundred and sixty to satisfy even the most capricious of the Bansko guests. The total length of the ski tracks is seventy kilometres. Thus, Bansko has become one of the most attractive winter destinations on the Balkans.

The Iceberg Hotel in Bulgaria's snazziest winter resort of Bansko caught fire on the International Students' Day, December 8. Eighty students were urgently evacuated from the blazing building.

At about 11 am, yest6erday, passers-by noticed that the hotel's roof was burning and immediately warned the administration and called the local fire service. At that time the hotel was full of students from Sofia's New Bulgarian University and the University for National and World Economy, most of them still sleeping after the December 8's party. Thanks to the prompt and adequate reactions of the hotel staff nobody got hurt.

"Surprisingly enough, the students were not scared. They took the incident with a smile, as something exciting, " the hotel staff told our reporter.

Without any panic, the guests took their baggage out and were later accommodated in another hotel.

Two fire engines from the towns of Bansko and Razlog were sent to fight the fire. It took the firemen two hours to put it out. To preliminary information, the fire started from a short circuit in the electrical installation near the roof.

"It is highly probable that as many as one million tourists will visit Bansko this winter," tour-operators forecast. There are 15 000 hotel beds in the resort now, and there will be twice as many as soon as hotels and apartment buildings that are currently under construction are completed. "I see no problem accomodating all the guests of the resort. I guarantee there will be neither water supply restrictions nor outages. We've set aside 25 million levs (1 Euro = 1.95 levs) of municipal money to develop the infrastructure," Bansko Mayor Alexander Kravarov said.