A word or two on Brasov, and Brasov In Your Pocket

Every couple of months we take a hike up to Brasov, very much ground zero of Romanian tourism and simply one of the nicest places in the country.

Besides the obvious fact that it is always a nice place in which to spend time, we visit Brasov for one main reason: to research the next issue of our mini-guide, Brasov In Your Pocket. (The next issue, Spring 2010, should be out sometime next week. It goes to print tomorrow).

We’ve been publishing the Brasov In Your Pocket mini-guide for a year now, and we hope one day to be able to turn the mini-guide into a full In Your Pocket (IYP) guide. Much will depend on how the city develops. An airport would help.

For those with long memories, you may remember that we actually began our Romanian publishing adventure in Brasov: we published Southern Transylvania In Your Pocket in May 1999, a month before the first Bucharest In Your Pocket hit the streets. Indeed, the first IYP office in Romania was in Brasov, not Bucharest.

Alas, though it was a wonderfully useful publication (and copies of it sell for a small fortune on eBay) Brasov (and indeed the whole area) was simply not ready for an IYP all those years ago, and commercially it simply didn’t work out.

But as anyone who has visited Brasov over the past year or so will testify, the city is moving on up. When we published that first Southern Transylvania In Your Pocket there were three good restaurants in the city (Blue Corner, Roata Norocului and Taverna). Now there are at least ten times that number, and more open all the time, as we discovered this past weekend.

(Stand by for another post about our latest Brasov discoveries).

First though, a moan about one old, old issue we still have a grievance with…

Getting there.

It takes longer now to get to Brasov by train than it did back when we started, in 1999. Much of the railway line from Bucharest – Brasov is currently out of action: long sections consist of a single-line, a line that has to be shared by passenger and goods trains going in both directions. No wonder the 167km trip takes more than three hours.

And the roads are no better.

The pothole count (especially the portion from Predeal – Campina) is into the many thousands. Speeds have to be reduced to a crawl in some parts so that drivers can slalom their way through all the potholes. Anyone who can do the Bucharest – Brasov trip (or the return) in less than two and a half hours is either mad or simply irresponsible.

Tagged as: Brasov, Brasov Airport, Brasov Hotels, Brasov In Your Pocket, Brasov Pubs, Brasov Restaurants, Bucharest - Brasov by train, CFR, Getting to Brasov, Poiana Brasov, Romanian Railways