Is not easy. Like a lunatic (or a new arrival: I mean, we’ve been here a while, so we should know what to expect…) we went to the website of Romanian railways, CFR, and tried to purchase a ticket to Brasov online. Did we succeed? Of course not. After ten minutes of trying to find the ‘buy tickets’ button, we gave up, realising of course that there is no such thing. After all, it’s only 2009, why on earth would CFR have come up with such customer friendly services?
No, right now, the only places you can buy train tickets are at the train station – but only one hour before departure of course – or at one of those lovely agencies that sells them. So we went there (the Brezoianu one). Chaos. The machine issuing ‘you are number 87 in the queue’ tickets was broken, so an old fashioned bun fight was in full flow. Elbows at the ready we managed to get served and buy our tickets before lunchtime. Not bad for a 10am start.
One more thing on (kind of) the same subject: the Bucharest – Brasov route must be one of the most important on the CFR network, no? So why – during the afternoon – are there only two trains? The return journey is worse: there is a train to Bucharest from Brasov at 11am, and no others until 2pm. Madness.
And people wonder why the roads are so busy…
[...] while ago we reported how we had thought we must be stupid, for we could not find the ‘buy tickets online [...]
You need a freaking user/pass to get to the page where you can RESERVE a ticket you need to PAY at the agency. Yes, I asked and that was the answer I got. I asked the lady at the agency is she was mocking me! [bad me for writing for a US travel website and assuming Romania is keeping up wt the new developments like... online reservations]
Oh you can buy tickets even 29 days in advance from the train station. The 1 hr rule applies for international trains when the station is not assigned a number of carriages to sell tickets for.
I typically go to the agency and pray the PC is working or the system is not down.
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Hello,
Is there no chance to book a train tricket from ubroad? A travel agent or something like that where I could call and pay with credit card in advance?
Thanks for your help.
Stefan
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Craig Turp Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
In a word, no.
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[...] for the first time this month, we turned up at the CFR agency on Strada Brezoianu and were left gobsmacked. This time, it wasn’t inefficiency that left us speechless, it was the [...]
you can buy tickets days in advance at the train station too. they changed the old ‘one hour before only’ system years ago.
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Craig Turp Reply:
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:26 am
Yes you quite correct… You can get tickets well in advance from the station (30 days in fact). But that’s no good if you live nowhere near the station. Point is online booking should be standard now in the developed world.
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Parmalat Reply:
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Online booking would be so complicated to introduce. Yes, there has to exist but first we need to have a bright mind somewhere in the CFR board so as to imagine the whole system.
I saw that in the U.S. you can even buy postage online, no need to go to the post office…
In order to buy train tickets online there should be a database registering you once you paid and inside the train the controller needs to have a pocket pc connected to the CFR servers so as the traveller shows his id and the controller checks him online.
That’s too much for a company about to go broke.
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