Tourism in Romania

Romania joined Europe in 2007. That's good. Romania is growing real fast apparently. But there are still loads of little things which make the country seem like it is still ruled by the 'Commies'.

Last night I sat at a restaurant and got ready to order when the waitress showed up and told me she could not cook for me because she had a group coming (what the f*** I thought, if you have a group you cannot serve single travelers???). I moved to another restaurant: out of the 20 dishes listed on the menu, only half was available. I got up this morning to find out there was no hot water for the shower; when I enquired at reception I was told 'the pump don't work' until further notice. Right! To warm up a bit I went down to the breakfast room and ordered a coffee: I could not get a coffee because something was wrong with the machine, or it had to be cleaned up or whatever... This afternoon, after a long long day walking I tried the shower in my new hotel in Brasov; well the shower handle was not working! So I had to bend under the bathtub tap to wash. And I can tell you it wasn't that easy to wash my hair, especially with sore legs and feet.

Maybe the nice thing about Romania is precisely all these little things. The country is not really ready for tourism (certainly not for mass-tourism) so not many tourists are around (although I took the train this morning with 2 Chinese girls which made me wonder...).


OK, well I am in Brasov, a super nice Saxon town looking like a postcard of a small German village. Streets, squares, churches, pointed roofs... it's all nice. Pix above is the view from the top of the mountain overlooking Brasov, after a nice little trek. Pix below is from the city looking up at the same moutain.

Who am I?

I am a real bad ass. I was born in the XVth century in Sighisoara. I love killing and torture people. My favourite is to insert a wooden stick up the ass of my victims, stick which emerges below their opposite shoulder and makes them suffer for 48h. But I also like to boil and burry alive. My nickname is the 'impaler'. I also inspired the legend of a bloodsucking vampire who has put Transylvania on the map, in books and in movies. I am dead by the way. Who am I?


Anyway, I crossed the Romanian Alps this morning and am now in the middle of Transylvania. Just the name sounds spooky, doesn't it? I am staying in the citadel of Sighisoara, would-be birth place of Dracula and a beautiful little fortified town. Tiny cobbled streets built on a hill, alleyways zigzagging around old churches... and a bit crippy at night.

I am now off for a beer with my new friend Vlad...

Bucharest from the inside

My mate has lived in Bucharest since 2003, when he fell in love with the city. He told me why he loved it so much.

“How could I describe Bucharest? Street kids and stray dogs? Tastefully dilapidated interbellic villas with washing hung out in the courtyard? Rows of faceless communist blocks? Perhaps the toppled statue of Lenin at Mogosoaia park? This is all cliche isn´t it?

To put it briefly, Bucharest is a horrible city. Its arteries are constantly clogged with traffic. The roads are abysmal. The infrastrucure is visibly crumbling. The vast majority of its resident live in grim, grey blocks. Public transport is terrible. House prices are inexplicably comparable to those in Vienna and Rome. Anything imported is hugely expensive. In the words of some backpackers I recently met, ´I can´t see why anyone would ever want to live here´.

It´s perhaps the fact that, on paper, Bucharest is such an unappealing place to live, which is one of its biggest advantages. It will never, ever become a tourist city like Prague or Budapest, which already feel like artificial cities entirely arranged for the benefits of wealthy Americans. It will never become the new Berlin, a hub for cultural creativity - house prices have already risen far too much for that to happen. I am not even sure that it will turn into a dystopian center for sex tourism, like Talin, a magnet for gangs of drunken lads on budget airlines. It still feels far too off-the-map, too instinctively tourist-unfriendly for all that.

Come here with a guidebook and a rucksack, and you will leave disappointed. Come with a friend who knows the right people, and you won´t want to leave. All the bad things about Bucharest might just be the reason that so many people love living here. Bucharest is, and might remain for some time, a genuinely hidden corner of Europe. It does not give up its secrets easily“.

Bucharest - day 1

We got off the taxi in front of my friend´s place, a former communist social appartment building. In Bucharest, these are called “blocks“. Two stray dogs were guarding the entrance, dirty but chilled. The city is known for its many stray dogs which had to be abandonned when the communists started destroying thousands of houses to make space for their huge buildings and palaces. The entrance hall was dark and grey, the lift small and a bit claustrophobic.


The contrast was striking when I got into my friend´s reformed flat, full of light and with a view on Stirbei Voda boulevard. To the left more communist type blocks and the Piata Revolutionar, to the right a modern glass and aluminium building. People in Bucharest are getting used to these style differences as more and more Western companies are settling in the capital.


We had an easy Saturday night as the capital is empty these days, we did not find a single restaurant open. It is Orthodox Easter this WE and most people in the city have left for the coutryside. 90% of Romanians are Christian Orthodox. At midnight, we joined the few remaining people in the neighborhood outside the local church. A service was sung and everybody was carrying a candle.

Today we walked around the city and I saw some pretty amazing buildings, avenues, squares and parks, communist style. I asked my friend to explain why he decided, 5 years ago, to settle here as the city is not what you could call a beautiful city. He had loads of reasons (see next post).

Why East?

When you think about South America, the tropics, warm weather, sea, sports...etc come to mind. When you think about Eastern Europe, what images comes to mind? Soviet tanks, cold, grey, war, poor, corruption?

My last 3 trips were in South America. This time, I thought about doing something different and opted for Eastern-Central Europe: I am not particularly attracted by this part of the world but I want to see what is there, to see how different people are (are they any different?) and to break the mystery surrounding these countries. I decided to start my trip in Bucharest, Romania, where a real good friend of mine has been living for 5 years. I though about Vienna - Austria - to pay a visit to another friend of mine I haven't seen in ages.... and Vienna is a great city I have only seen in Winter.

So here you go, I decided to join the dots and try this: a 19 days trip from the Romanian capital to Vienna, via Budapest in Hungary. Do not really know where and how I will travel between the 3 capitals but I am sure I will find my way...