What will impress you in Romania - a trip to Bucharest and Sinaia

Romania is a country in South-East Europe that offer a rich choice of tourist attractions and vacation experiences: the magnificent architecture of Bucharest, the romantic Danube Delta, the popular Romanian Black Sea resorts like Mamaia, the impressive medieval towns in Transylvania like Brasov, the world-famous Painted Monasteries in Bucovina, the traditional villages in Maramures, the majestic Carpathian Mountains, and much more.

Our Romania trip started in the capital city Bucharest. Station Nord (Bucharest North) station is a quite nice building with old architecture. Measures are taken to limit the beggars and street vendors have introduced such a fee to stay on the platform - pour half. It's quite cheap, but with this approach the station assumes much cultural form.

There is a direct connection to the subway from the station (directly from the waiting room). Bucharest metro is relatively new - it was placed into service in 1979, but is quite granular. (Four beams with about 45 stops). Unfortunately, its performance was not particularly good quality and now looks rather shabby.

Architectural subway is a socialist Art Deco, but filled with cheap materials so that it would look really good if restored. The station where we left - Stefan Mare - has read quite spartan furnishings - yellow tiles of the same material as the yellow pavement in Sofia, the most ordinary gypsum plaster walls, and most ordinary neon lights - in Sofia's South Park to the subways. Generous to myself Ceausescu was pretty frugal for his people. The trains are regular, although sometimes one can get nervous while waiting.

I was placed in the neighborhood of composers. The whole neighborhood has streets named after composers. The quarter is nice with a perfectly straight streets and geometrical located 4-5 storey blocks, and with streets and sidewalks in perfect condition.

What you will NOT find in Bucharest:
1. Chalga - instead listen to folk music, which closely resembles the Bulgarian. Continuously on TV you can see a lead in costume, leading folkloric show.
2. New construction in the old quarters and center - in some downtown buildings are beginning to repair just now. Overall, the center looks battered. I heard about new and beautiful quarters, but I have not seen any new building and a few new commercial buildings.
3. Narrow streets clogged with parked cars. Partly because of the megalomania of the leaders of Romania, partly because some saw other reasons not clogged by parked cars on small streets.
4. Working Church. I visited several churches on Sunday (!?!) and only one of them worked.
5. Tickets for public transport to be sold freely.
6. Blade commercial street.
7. Broken streets - all streets and sidewalks are in perfect condition.

Moreover, in Romania:
1. Nuclear power works
2. Cars are being produced
3. Railways are in pretty good condition
4. No currency board

Sinaia is a former royal residence, now part of the resort complex of several villages located in the Prahova valley 120 km northwest of Bucharest. The valley is easily accessible as it passes over the main rail route Bucharest - Brasov - Budapest and has trains almost every hour. Fare little surprise-60 lei per person (40 euro) in both directions. Then it turned out it was worth - the train was very comfortable with soft seats, doors are opened by machines with compressed air after pressing the button. Toilet train, although it was slightly depreciated, was in perfect purity and fully usable.

Another feature of the Romanian railways is that the trains glide very smoothly on the tracks, apparently because some technology is used to remove the annoying clatter of trains and tracks are perfect. The train rattled only when the branch went through the line moved smoothly anyway.
I landed to Sinaia at noon and the day proved to be promising. The sun was shining, the frost is melted from the roofs, the sky was completely blue and the air crisp and clear. It couldn't be better. Since the station is located in the lowest point of the valley, one had to climb some very steep stairs (about 30 meters almost vertical) to reach the resort itself. Immediately after climbing eyes you see a snowy palace, up on the left there is another, but a little higher, and shortly after that comes the medieval Monastery Sinaia (Named after Mount Sinai in the Bible). We continued to Pele and Pelishor palaces. A picturesque alley covered with pavement (much of pavement has disappeared) leads there. Almost all of the lane is clogged with souvenir stalls. Looking to buy anything but just murmur bought magnetic beads. Pele and Pelishor are not medieval palaces. They were built on the threshold of 20th century with the idea to resemble the medieval ages, so that all their beauty is a little fake, but that does not diminish their attractiveness.

Check for more Romania travel resources in the European Travel Directory.