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:

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.

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.

Went to Bucharest’s Gara de Nord at the weekend (not because we were getting a train anywhere, simply for research purposes ahead of the publication of the next Bucharest In Your Pocket, which will hit the streets over the next few days).*

We were more impressed than ever.

Bucharest’s main railway station still gets a bad rap in most quarters, but few would disagree that it is these days a far better place than ever it was, certainly in the time we’ve been living in the city. There are still plenty of shady characters around – not least the rip-off taxi drivers who wait for unsuspecting foreigners and provincials on the platforms as trains come in – but as Eastern European railway stations go, we’ve seen a lot worse.

When we first ever arrived at Gara de Nord – and for years afterwards – it had a smell about it that could only be described as ‘onions and Carpati.’ (A smell probably caused by the fact that everyone seemed to be carrying bags of onions and smoking Carpati, the finest cigarettes ever made).

We’ve written this before somewhere, and stand by it ten years or so on: the arrival in Gara de Nord of McDonald’s – with its obsessive dedication to cleanliness and order – was a great moment for the station. You can say what you like about McDonald’s (and most people usually do), but there is no question that Gara de Nord became a better place the moment they opened up shop (late 1998, if memory serves).

Apropos of McDonald’s, the best thing to happen to breakfast in Bucharest this year was when the chain finally started selling Sausage & Egg McMuffins. As people who have always thought that breakfast was the best thing about McDonald’s, we were more than delighted.

Anyway, back to Gara de Nord.

There is much that is still wrong at the station. It needs a thorough paint job and general brightening up, the Tourist Information ‘office’ leaves a lot to be desired, the women who hold the fort at the station’s own information desk appear to have been trained to reach new levels of surliness, and the addition of a few more departure boards would be helpful. But the toilets are OK to use (the gents, at least), there is a top covrigarie, and buying a ticket is far less stressful than it used to be, mainly because you can buy tickets online now and not bother with the ticket office at the station at all.

Thorough as ever at the weekend, we went to the left luggage desk to check if there had been any change in how much they charge, and was delighted to see that they now post their prices – and opening hours – in English. They are, apparently, Open all the time, and a small package costs 4 lei.

Are you brave enough to go for the big package?

*Being an old fashioned kind of city guide, we don’t rip information off the internet, we actually put the legwork in and verify our facts first hand. An outdated concept today, but one we naively cling to.

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).

There’s progress for you. That the 167km journey from Bucharest to Brasov – a journey which should be the Tourist Express, ferreting happy campers into the middle of the country – takes over three hours should be a national disgrace.

Romania's new high-speed rolling stock: first photo emerges

Apologists for Romanian railways (and for Romania in general) have long argued that ‘at least Romanian trains are on time.’ Given that there are so few trains, they bloody well should be.

Yet even this is no longer true. Last year the total delays of all Romanian trains added up to more than five years. Since 2010, delays have even been built into the timetables. This should make the punctuality figures look better (although it appears to have had little effect), but hardly speeds trains up. At the risk of out-metaphoring and contradicting ourselves, Romania’s trains are going backwards. Fast.

The other argument (if it can be called that) has always been ‘Bulgaria’s trains are worse.’ Perhaps they are (it takes a soul-destroying six hours to get from Ruse to Sofia, for example) but when discussing Romania’s trains, we fail to see how Bulgaria’s are in any way relevant.

This argument is common in Romania: criticise the country (or something about it) and often the reply will simply be ‘Well it is just as bad/worse in (insert name of other country).’

Alas, when it comes to trains, Romania is about to lose that riposte.

Reports today suggest that Bulgaria is getting its act together*, and in partnership with the Chinese is building three high-speed lines which should be operational by the end of 2013. On hearing the news, a senior manager at Romanian Railways (CFR) Emanoil Culda, gave what has to be the quote of the year so far: ‘We’re angry too.’ (Alex Mihaileanu writes well on the subject – in Romanian – here).

It would be fine of course if Romania compensated for its crap railways by having brilliant roads, the jewel in the crown of which would be a vast network of motorways. As it is, Romania has one motorway which goes from a major city to another major city (the A1 from Bucharest to Pitesti). Until the A2 is completed all the way to Constanta it does not count.

(We also read the other day that – in what must be a first – Romania’s motorways agency has plans to shorten the Bucharest – Ploiesti motorway by six kilometres. (That being a motorway which of course does not yet exist. Perhaps that is the plan: shorten it by another 56 kilometers and they will not have to build it at all! Fantastic. It reminds us of Bucharest metro operator Metrorex renaming a non-existent metro station).

With crap trains, and with no decent roads in sight, the only option for travelling long distances in Romania will remain the plane for some time. So it’s a good job that national airline Tarom – which still has a virtual monopoly on internal flights to and from Bucharest – is such a well-run, profitable airline.

Oh, hang on…

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*In the interests of objectivity, we should point out that we are just as doubtful of Bulgaria’s claims to have three high-speed trains up and running by the end of 2013 as we would be if Romania had just announced the same thing. We will believe it when we get to travel at speed from Sofia to Varna.