CFR

Bucharest Life goes to Sibiu

by Craig Turp December 14, 2011 Romania

 As you may know (if you have been paying attention), we have been in Sibiu of late, researching a brand new In Your Pocket mini-guide to the city. (We should really now be writing up our notes instead of messing about here, but that’s another story). Anyway, runaway tigers aside, we liked the place a [...]

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Another quick word on Romanian trains

by Craig Turp December 9, 2011 Bucharest

 There is no doubt that Romanian railways (CFR) online train ticket purchasing system works, and works well. We wrote some of this post on a train to Brasov, the ticket for which we bought online. But there are still problems. First of all, you can’t pick your seat. Being a but fussy, we like an [...]

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Romanian trains in ‘going slightly faster’ shock

by Craig Turp November 30, 2011 Romania

 Researching the train schedule we still include in every issue of Bucharest (and Brasov) In Your Pocket, we couldn’t help but notice that the new Mersul Trenurilor (valid from December 12th) has a few interesting developments, including trains which actually appear to go faster than they used to. The 166 kilometres from Bucharest – Brasov [...]

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The Romanian National Institute of Statistics didn’t get the memo about the terminal decline of Romanian tourism

by Craig Turp September 5, 2011 Bucharest

 Oh dear. The Romanian National Institute of Statistics (INS) has gone seriously off-message. According to its latest figures, published today, the number of tourists in Romania in July of this year was an impressive 22 per cent higher than in July 2010. The number of foreign tourists was almost sixteen per cent higher. In the [...]

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A few quick points about Romanian railways

by Craig Turp June 21, 2011 Romania

  First off, CFR’s online ticket purchasing system works better than ever. The problems that appeared when first launched back in 2009 (it threw up all sorts of weird seating plans) have been resolved, and it now – we can happily report – hands out better seating arrangements than some of the ticket clerks at [...]

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Romania’s trains continue to go backwards

by Craig Turp February 9, 2011 Bucharest

 That Romania’s railways are buggered is no secret. We’ve written about how awful and slow they are many times before. The average speed of Romanian passenger trains is currently just 45kph (and we think even that modest speed is highly doubtful). That is less than half the average speed of Romanian trains in 1989 (91kph). [...]

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By popular demand: Curent

by Craig Turp January 24, 2011 Romania

 We’re now officially doing requests. And the first… well, it has to be… curent. As anyone who has ever tried to open a window on a hot, steamy, Romanian train in the middle of summer will know, curent (translated, amongst other things, as ‘draught’) is that all purpose bad guy which causes colds and which [...]

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