Romania

Facts

Capital: Bucharest

Population: 21.48 Million

Language: Romanian

Currency: New leu

2 Wheels to China Ratings

Food & Drink: 4/10

We saw little of Romanian cuisine. Most of the restaurants were Italian, some good, some bad. We did find some very good biscuits though which kept us going on the road.

Road conditions: 4/10

None of the roads were in great condition, even the ones that had just been resurfaced! Some were truly awful (and very painful.) When the roads were quieter (for a couple of days after crossing the border) this was not so much of a problem as potholes and cracks could be avoided, but many of the roads were very busy. One dual carriageway run into the town of Deva had all the manhole covers mising, so we had the choice of either going down one of these 2-foot-wide holes or swerving out into the path of the traffic behind us. This is a fairly typical example of what to expect if you cycle here.

Traffic: 3/10

Between Oradea and around Deva the traffic was not too bad. It picked up after that and got worse and worse the closer to Budapest, or its main arteries, we went. It was very dangerous in parts, and we chose to take a bus for safety and sanity.

Scenery: 8/10

Very, very beautiful in those hills and we didn't even touch on the Carpathians.

People: 3/10

The really disappointing part of travelling here, since we were not expecting much of Romania other than from this and the scenery. See our diary page for a bit more detail, but we did feel quite unwelcome in the small villages and in the larger towns/cities. We had the best luck in the medium towns in the western part of the country (Brad, Beuis etc.)

Bureaucracy: 7/10

We did not have any problems at the borders. There was a bit of a queue to get in, but nothing too bad, and a massive queue to leave and enter Bulgaria, but we were waved through quite quickly with the bikes.

The simplifying of the currency (removing some zeroes) took some getting used to, particularly as some people still referred to prices in the 'old' way (Four million leu, you have to be joking...)

Miscellaneous

Stray dogs are a pest in Romania, but we never came across any that were too aggressive. They tend to either ignore you or just slink away when you walk past, but they do chase the bikes. The Dazer was a good buy here.

Richard was live on BBC Radio Berkshire from Bucharest on the 02 August 2006 giving an update on the trip.