The Rough Guide to Romania 5 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

532 Pages·2008·19.9 MB·English

by  Rough Guides

“The excellent Rough
Guide to Romania.”
Financial Times, London
“The best overall
guidebook for Romania
is the Rough Guide.”
Condé Nast Traveller
EXPLORE every corner of
Romania using the clearest
maps of any guide.
CHOOSE where to go and
what to see, inspired by
dozens of photos.
READ where to go and what
to see, inspired by dozens of
photos.
RELY on our selection of the
best places to stay and eat,
for every budget.
THE ROUGH GUIDE to
MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR TIME ON EARTH
OTHER ROUGH GUIDES INCLUDE: w.roughguides.com Romania
Published by Rough Guides
Distributed by The Penguin Group
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ROUGHGUIDES
Romania
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The Rough Guide to
Romania
written and researched by
Tim Burford and Norm Longley
NEW YORK • LONDON • DELHI
www.roughguides.com
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Contents

Colour section 1 Contexts 429
Introduction ............................... 6 The historical framework ........ 41
Where to go ............................... 7 Minorities and religions .......... 448
When to go .............................. 11 Wildlife and environmental
Things not to miss ................... 1 issues ................................ 451
Music ..................................... 459
Basics 25 Dracula and vampires ............ 471
Books .................................... 476
Getting there ............................ 27
Getting around ......................... 2 Language 485
Accommodation....................... 7
Food and drink ........................ 9 Words and phrases ................ 489
The media ................................ 41 Glossary................................. 494
Festivals................................... 42
Sports and outdoor activities ... 45 Travel store 497
Travel essentials ...................... 46

Guide 53 Small print & Index 509
1 Bucharest ............................ 55
2 Wallachia .......................... 10 The great outdoors
3 Transylvania ...................... 14 colour section
4 Moldavia ........................... 261 following p.408
5 Maramureş ........................ 25
6 The Banat ......................... 57
7 The Delta and the coast .... 87 Romania’s religious
architecture colour
section following p.248

 Gura Apei Lake, Retezat mountains, Transylvania  Local transport, Maramures
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| CONTENTS |
4
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| INTRODUCTION | WHERE TO GO | WHEN TO GO
5
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| INTRODUCTION | WHERE TO GO | WHEN TO GO
Introduction to
Romania
Travel in Romania is as rewarding as it is challenging. The
country’s fantastic mountain scenery and great diversity of
wildlife, its cultures and people, and a way of life that at
times seems little changed since the Middle Ages, leave
few who visit unaffected. Rather than expecting an easy
ride, try to accept whatever happens as an adventure –
encounters with Gypsies, wild bears and tricky offcials are
likely to be far more interesting than anything purveyed by
the tourist board.
As fascinating as the major towns and cities are – such
as the capital, Bucharest, Brasov, Cluj, Timisoara and,
most enchantingly, Sighisoara – Romania’s charm
essentially lies in the remoter, less visited regions.
Almost any exploration of the villages of rural
Romania will be rewarding, with sights as diverse
as the log houses in Oltenia, Delta villages built of
reeds, and the magnifcent wooden churches, with
their sky-scraping Gothic steeples, of Maramures, not
to mention the country’s abundance of more traditional churches, which
refect a history of competing communities and faiths. Romanians trace
their ancestry back to the Romans, and have a noticeable Latin character
– warm, spontaneous, anarchic, and appreciative of style and life’s pleasures.
In addition to ethnic Romanians, one and a half million Magyars pursue
a traditional lifestyle long since vanished in Hungary, while dwindling
numbers of Transylvanian Germans (Saxons) reside around the fortifed
towns and churches their ancestors built in the Middle Ages to guard the
mountain passes. Along the coast, in the Delta and in the Banat, there’s
a rich mixture of Russians, Ukrainians, Serbs, Slovaks, Bulgars, Gypsies,
Turks and Tatars.
In many ways, Romania is only just emerging from the shadow of the
6 regime of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu who, during more than two
decades of rule, drove the country to the brink of bankruptcy. Today,
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| INTRODUCTION | WHERE TO GO | WHEN TO GO
Fact file
• Occupying an area of
some 27,000 square
kilometres, and with a
population of around
2 million, Romania is
one of central-eastern
Europe’s largest nations.
Its capital, Bucharest,
lies in the far south of
the country on the plains
of Wallachia, located
between the Danube
and the mountainous
region of Transylvania
to the north. The high-
est peak is Moldoveanu
(2544m), in the
Carpathian mountains.
• The constitution sets
in place a parliamentary
system of government,
elected every four years,
although Romania remains one of Europe’s with the prime minister at
its head – the president
poorer cousins, its admission into NATO is head of state.
in 2004 and then, more importantly, the
• Tourism is one of the
European Union in 2007, has fnally fastest-growing sectors
cemented its place in the wider interna- of the Romanian econo-
tional community. my, with mountain, coast-
al and health spa resorts
absorbing the bulk of the
country’s tourist traffc.
Romania’s most impor-
tant exports are textiles
Where to go and footwear, metal
products, and machinery
he frst point of arrival for many and equipment, and its
main trading partners are
visitors to Romania is the capital, Italy and Germany.
Bucharest. While far from alluring • Romania’s most
T– its wide nineteenth-century famous historical
Parisian-style boulevards are choked with fgure is Vlad Tepes
trafc, once-grand fn-de-siècle buildings are (c.141–76), also known
crumbling and the suburbs are dominated by as Vlad the Impaler
grim apartment blocks – it remains the centre aDnradc, umlao.re familiarly, as 7
of the country’s commercial and cultural life.
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| INTRODUCTION | WHERE TO GO | WHEN TO GO
 Princely Church in Curtea de Arges, Wallachia
From the capital, most visitors make a beeline for the province of
Transylvania to the north, setting for the country’s most thrilling scenery and
home to its fnest cities: the gateway to Transylvania is Brasov, whose medieval
8 old town is a good introduction to the Saxon architecture of the region,
which reaches its peak in the fortifed town of Sibiu and the jagged skyline
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 Barsana monastery, Maramures
| INTRODUCTION | WHERE TO GO | WHEN TO GO