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Getting to Romania is
easy from nearly all parts of the world, due to its position, as
well as the fact that it is served by an array of transport types
and companies.
Entry requirements to Romania in the past few years have been
liberalized, and consequently, citizens of the European Union,
United States of America, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, Australia and
New Zealand can stay up to 90 days with no visa. Nationals from
Turkey can stay up to 60 days in Romania, while those of most
former-Communist Eastern European countries can stay up to 30 days.
To make sure, check the official visa information provided by the
Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs mae.ro before you travel.
If you do need to obtain a visa from outside your own country, try
obtaining it from somewhere else beside Budapest, where it can take
3 to 4 days. From Ljubljana the process can sometimes be done in a
day because they are not so busy.
By plane
Romania has 17 civilian airports, out of which currently 9 are
served by scheduled international flights. Bucharest's Henri Coanda
(Otopeni) Airport is the largest and busiest, but its Aurel Vlaicu
Airport also fields some flights, and there is also direct service
to Timisoara, Cluj-Napoca, Oradea, Satu Mare, Sibiu (Transylvania),
Constanta, Bacau, Iasi, Suceava, Targu-Mures and Baia Mare.
There are three important Romanian airlines:
TAROM , the Romanian flag carrier, based in Bucharest Otopeni
Carpatair , based in Timisoara, connects this city with eight
Italian and three German destinations, and also has
collector/distributor flights to the following Romanian airports:
Cluj-Napoca, Bucharest, Constanta, Oradea, Sibiu, Iasi, Suceava,
Satu Mare and Bacau
Blue Air, the only Romanian low-cost airline, based in Bucharest
Baneasa
There are several flights a day from Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich,
Vienna and Zurich offered by Austrian, Carpatair, Lufthansa, Swiss
and Tarom.
In recent times Romania became increasingly attractive for low cost
carriers. A Romanian low-fare airline Blue Air is serving various
destinations in Europe from Bucharest (Aurel Vlaicu Airport), Arad,
Targu Mures and Bacau airports. A Hungarian budget airline,Wizz,
introduced direct flights from London Luton to Bucharest in January
2007. Several others ( Wind Jet, MyAir, Sky Europe, AlpiEagles are
already operating flights in Romania or starting spring 2007.
Easyjet is operating flights from London, Milan and Madrid.
By train
Romania is relatively well connected with the European rail network.
There are daily international trains to Munich, Prague, Venice,
Vienna, Budapest, Zagreb, Belgrade, Sofia, Thessaloniki, Istanbul,
Chişinău, Kiev and Moscow. But due to the poor quality of rail
infrastructure in the region train travel on long distances takes a
considerable time.
Nonetheless, trains are the ideal way of reaching cities in western
and central Romania such as Brasov, Sighisoara, Oradea or
Cluj-Napoca coming from Central Europe.
International trains to Romania include EuroCity trains which are of
a relatively high standard and night trains. Romania is part of the
Eurailpass offer.
By bus
Even though Romania has not been traditionally seen as a 'bus
country', buses are becoming a more and more popular way to reach
the country from overseas, especially from the Balkans and the
former USSR, but also from Western Europe, e.g. Germany and
Switzerland. Even though trains are still the most popular way of
getting to Romania from Central Europe, due to good service, train
services to the Balkans and former USSR are of a considerably poorer
quality and are less frequent (mainly because railway infrastructure
in these countries is a lot poorer than Romania's infrastructure).
For this reason, a slew of private bus operators now provide quicker
and arguably more comfortable coach services to and from cities such
as Chişinău, Kiev, Odessa, Sofia and Istanbul.
A general rule of the thumb on whether you should use bus or train
is this: if trains are available just as frequently, and at around
the same price, and take around the same amount of time, then
definitely use them. Otherwise, consider the buses.
By boat
Cruises on Danube are available, very expensive though, starting
from Passau or Vienna and having a final destination in Danube
Delta. These cruises will stop in every major port along the road,
in Austria, Hungary, Serbia and Romania. There you can travel by
rapid boats, fisherman's boats on endless channels to watch huge
colonies of pelicans, cranes or small migratory birds. You can enjoy
a local dish, fishermen's borsch, prepared using different species
of fish, but take care, they use the Danube's river water! It is the
only way to travel around the Danube Delta, and the only way to get
to the city of Sulina.
By car
You can easily drive into Romania coming from the other EU countries
in the West, but when coming from the East you will have to drive
through Moldova and you will positively experience troubles there.
You may find information there is a direct border crossing between
Ukraine and Romania in the south-eastern corner of Romanian Moldavia
(Reni/Galati), but this is NOT true - you have to go via
Giurgiulesti, which is in Moldova ( a small stretch of about 500
meters). Moldovan border control officers will ask several times for
money (ecological tax, road tax ... up to 20 € in July 2007). Coming
from the north (Ukraine), can also be time-consuming, times can vary
from one to more than 5 hours
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