Dragobrat in western Ukraine, a year ago: on the fifth day of a ski trip with a Danish tour operator, Russia attacked the Ukraine. We, the tour participants, were evacuated to nearby Romania and left behind on February 24th Ukrainians with whom we had previously spent a few fantastic days in the snow. As we fled to the safety of our homeland, they faced a very uncertain future. We had been in contact throughout the year and now, a year later, we asked them what the local situation was like: a catski entrepreneur, a tour operator, a snowboard instructor and a hotel employee.
Dragobat is located in the southwest of the country, not far from Poland and Romania. The place consists of about fifty small hotels, bars and restaurants, which mingle with the coniferous forest on a mountain flank at 1300 meters. A few hundred people live here during a normal winter season, before the war and before the pandemic there were up to three thousand tourists per winter. The reason: the small ski area with seven lifts and two companies that take winter sports enthusiasts to the surrounding mountains with snow cats. It’s called “cat skiing” – and everyone raved that it couldn’t be had better or cheaper anywhere in the world than here.