At last: Bucharest opens a Tourist Information Centre (closed at weekends)

Amazing. After waiting 12 years in vain for a Tourist Information Centre (TIC) to open in Bucharest you take a week’s holiday and whack, a big new TIC opens its doors in the perfect location: the pedestrian underpass underneath Piata Universitatii.

As such, the first thing we did on our return was to head excitedly to this new wonder of the modern age.

Is it any good?

Not really.

For a start, unless you were using the underpass or going to Piata Universitatii metro station, you would never know it was there. We saw no signs at street level pointing quizzical tourists to its existence.

Secondly, we found it to be closed. This at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon. Perhaps understandable; after all, who visits cities at the weekend?

Peeking inside the windows we saw that we were not missing out on very much.

There was a big bench (of the type found in Bucharest’s better parks) and little else. A few flyers and leaflets from museums, but nothing that had us bursting to break down the door in order to get inside. Who knows, maybe they keep the good stuff under the counter. We will go back during the week to find out (assuming it is open during the week).

Credit where it is due, however: though the TIC was closed, the authorities have kitted-out the Piata Universitatii underpass with four impressive touch screens, packed with information for the visitor to Bucharest.

Unfortunately, however, on Saturday afternoon just one of the four screens was working.

We tried it out, however, and we were immediately impressed.

To avoid confusing foreign visitors by presenting them with a choice of information in the three of four most common international languages, the Bucharest authorities have kept things refreshingly simple by offering information in Romanian only.

What’s more, to avoid presenting visitors with a dilemma about which of the many events going on in the capital to go to, the screens offer no information about any events at all when the ‘Evenimente’ option is selected.

In fact, the touch screens are refreshingly simple. They offer a map of the city, a map of Bucharest’s public transport networks, a couple of suggested tourist routes… and that’s about it.

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Speaking of quizzical tourists, we were on the Bucharest metro the other day with a friend who was making his first visit to the Romanian capital.

He was looking at the metro map, and was most puzzled by it.

Not by its general uselessness and innacuracy (a road we have been down before, here) but by the fact that the two end stations of the M3 line (Industriilor and Anghel Saligny) have a sign next to them that denotes an interchange with… a motorway.

‘Is there a park and ride scheme?’ he asked.

‘No,’ we replied.

‘So why would you put a sign for a motorway on a metro map?’ he fired back at us.

Answers on a postcard please.

Tagged as: Bucharest, Bucharest Events, Bucharest Guide, Bucharest In Your Pocket, Bucharest Metro, Bucharest Public Transport, Bucharest Tourist Information