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 lot. It is not quite Brasov but it is on the right track, and its central squares are in better shape than any other town we’ve been to in Romania (a result of the place being beautified ahead of it becoming the European Capital of Culture in 2007).

Sibiu's Fortifications

As soon as the guide is written, published and the text and photos are online, you will of course be the first to know.

Meantime, we leave you with a photo of a bench at Sibiu train station, which is, to say the least, in bad shape:

It is not, however, in quite as bad a shape as this one:

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 aisle seat, in the direction of travel. In the lottery that is the current system, we got a window seat.

Second, you can only buy a ticket at least 24 hours in advance. So if you want a ticket for tomorrow morning, it’s already too late.

Thirdly, if you want to buy a return, you can only do so for the same kind of train (if your outward journey is made with an InterCity, you have to return with an InterCity). This seriously limits your options. To be able to pick a return journey from all available trains, you need to book two singles (and thereby miss out on the discount for buying a return).

However… We notice that today and tomorrow the system is undergoing an upgrade. Maybe these problems are being solved as we speak.

And while we are on the subject of trains, our day trip to Brasov yesterday was spot on, to the minute. Both trains left and arrived on time.

Romania’s trains might not be any quicker than they were 20 years ago, but if they are going to be reliable, then that’s a very good start.

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 can now be covered in two hours 29 minutes, at the breakneck, death-defying average speed of almost 67kph.

Some routes have had more than an hour cut off their journey times, including Bucharest – Arad, which can now be done in 10 hours and 43 minutes, and Bucharest – Satu Mare: cut from 15 hours and 41 minutes to 14 hours 08 minutes.

Of course, the fact that journey times had been creeping up for years should not be overlooked. The new journey times are no faster in fact than they were a few years ago, and in many cases remain much slower than 1989.

Also, some routes do not appear to have done quite so well as others. Bucharest – Sibiu for example now has no InterCity trains, and the route is served by just two trains a day, the quickest of which still takes a whopping five hours 35 minutes.

Still, we should give thanks for the improvements there have been. Bucharest – Brasov in under two and a half hours is reason to celebrate.

The other development is the fancy new names the trains are getting. Rapid and Acelerat trains are being rebranded as InterRegio trains (prefix IR), while the dreaded Personal trains will from December 12th be called Regio (prefix R-).

All aboard the Regio

InterCity trains are being cleverly rebranded as InterCity trains (prefix IC).

To confuse things even further, some InterCity trains will start off as InterCity, but will become InterRegio trains halfway along the route. They will have the prefix ICN.

Clear as mud? Thought so.

You can consult the wonder of the modern age that is the new Romanian train timetable online here. You can buy train tickets online (and yes, you can: the system works brilliantly) here.

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 first seven months of 2011, the total number of tourists in Romania grew by 14 per cent (from 3.26 million in 2010 to 3.72 million this year), while the number of foreign tourists arriving in Romania grew by 11.6 per cent to just over 825,000.

This year – starting from a modest level, we admit – Romanian tourism is on the up.

So why the continued ‘Romanian tourism is in terminal decline‘ narrative? (See yesterday’s ramblings).

Answers on a postcard please.

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 the station do.

The only downside we can see now is that you have to buy your tickets at least 24 hours in advance: so if you want tickets for a train tomorrow morning, for example, you are already too late.

Other than that the system is flawless.

Secondly, the once infamously slow speed of the Bucharest to Brasov train is rising fast. Some services now do the journey in under three hours. By the end of the summer, we have been told that the journey will take no more than two and a half hours. (Which means that years of line-upgrades and much investment have paid off: the Bucharest-Brasov train will soon go as fast as it did 20 years ago).

Thirdly, we would love to know what CFR’s actual definition of ‘InterCity‘ is, and how it differs from its definition of ‘Rapid‘. This past weekend we took a Rapid to Brasov, and an InterCity on the return journey. The only difference we could find (besides the extra 20 lei or so you pay for travelling InterCity) was that the Rapid made two extra stops, at Busteni and Azuga.

Other than that, the journey time, rolling stock and locomotive were identical.