Infrastructure

On second thoughts, are Romania’s roads really all that bad?

by Craig Turp January 24, 2012 Romania

 As you will probably know if you have read this, we spent the festive season at our in-laws in Petresti, Satu Mare, at the other end of the country. Having completely forgotten to book flights back when we should have done in October, we ended up driving. The experience was, surprisingly, not all bad. It [...]

46 comments Read the full article →

Burying Bucharest’s Cables

by Craig Turp October 18, 2011 Bucharest

 We’ve been going on about Bucharest’s unsightly and downright dangerous overhead cables ever since we began writing about the city here at Bucharest Life. In brief (we do not want to risk repeating ourselves too much) we think that the cables make the city look Third World, and that burying them would do wonders for [...]

6 comments Read the full article →

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 [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

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 [...]

10 comments Read the full article →

Why is the prime minister personally opening modestly-sized extensions to airports?

by Craig Turp April 16, 2011 Bucharest

 Given the level of media coverage which greeted the opening of a new extension to Bucharest’s Otopeni Airport last month (all of which was positive) you could be forgiven for thinking that the airport was now a one-stop shop for all sorts, from instant world peace to a cure for cancer. In fact, as we [...]

8 comments Read the full article →

Rovinietas for all

by Craig Turp February 15, 2011 Bucharest

 A marvelous example of inequality at work in Romania: Romanian subsistence farmers, living in small villages and benefiting from very little income, want to drive (probably in an old Dacia) to the nearest town of any decent size to sell their produce. As they will be using national roads, they need to buy a Rovinieta [...]

37 comments Read the full article →

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). [...]

20 comments Read the full article →

← Previous Entries