What Is a Hizha?

Some guidebooks and websites translate the Bulgarian word hizha (хижа, ['xiʒɐ]) as chalet. English speakers, however, tend to associate "chalet" with a wooden holiday lodging in the mountains, typically rented for a ski holiday, which is a different experience from what a hizha offers.

A hizha is the Bulgarian counterpart of what is known as a rifugio in Italy, a refuge in France, and a Hütte in Germany, Austria and Switzerland - a mountain hut serving hikers and mountaineers.

A hizha can offer:

• Simple accommodation, either in a dormitory or in rooms with two, three or more beds. Private bathrooms are rare, but available in some huts.
• A canteen (self-service) with simple dishes (bean soup, lentils, omelette), tea and other drinks. Some huts have an associated restaurant, but that is uncommon.
• Basic amenities like electricity, running water, heating, and often a shower. These too are not always guaranteed, especially in high-altitude huts, due to water scarcity or freezing.
• A communal space, the abovementioned canteen, where you can meet other hikers.
• A hut keeper (hizhar, хижар), who is sometimes the only staff member at the hut.

Unlike mountain huts in the Alps, many Bulgarian hizhas offer bed linen (included in the price) for each guest, but that too varies between huts, so it is advisable to bring a sleeping bag liner as a backup. In other respects, the standards are generally simpler than in a typical Alpine hut.

Many huts don't have indoor toilets, just an outhouse.

You can check the specific amenities a hut offers on its dedicated page at hut.bg.

In addition to the hizha, there is another type of accommodation, called zaslon (заслон). This is usually a small, basic shelter built to protect hikers and mountaineers from sudden bad weather - similar to bivacco in Italy and Biwakschachtel in Austria/Germany. However, some zasloni are staffed and function essentially as huts, but for regulatory reasons are still called zaslon, so this term can mean either a manned, or an unmanned shelter.

On hut.bg, these staffed shelters are treated as huts and have their own hut pages, where their titles retain the official word заслон (shelter) rather than хижа (hut). They are both shown with the same icon on the map (the icon for a hut), so that you can easily distinguish them from unmanned shelters.