Romania vies with Bulgaria as the cheapest destination in Europe. The latter has an edge in most respects, but Romania is still a terrific value at all budget levels, from backpacker to luxe.

If you’re looking for the European cafe culture in summer or want to stay in a nice historic village after a day of skiing in the winter, this is where you can do both on a fraction of what you would spend further west.

Overall, Romania is a good deal for backpackers, a fantastic deal for mid-range travelers on vacation. A backpacking couple could get by on $40 or $50 a day, but a couple spending $100 to $200 a day in Romania will really be living large. Keep in mind though that Romania’s currency fluctuates quite a bit, sometimes moving from 2.8 to the dollar to 3.5 (and maybe back again) within the space of a year. Hotels are often priced in dollars or euros, but anything else you spend money on is not.

The following Romania traveler prices were converted to dollars at 3.4 lei.

Hotel and Hostel Prices in Romania

A place to lay your head won’t hit you too hard here except maybe summer on the Black Sea coast. There you might have to pay more than what’s below.

Hostel beds: as low as $5 in some spots, but $7 to $14 is the average. Hostel and traveler hotel owners will usually throw in breakfast and a few freebies to give them a leg up: beer, filtered water, Internet access, and maybe a welcome shot of Romanian moonshine.

Private home rooms: as little as $12 double in the countryside, but $20 to $35 is more common.

Monastery rooms: $18 – $24 double.

Mountain hiking trail huts: $3 to $12 per person

Mid-range hotels: 2-star room $30 to $60, 3-star room under $70, only 5-star ones in Bucharest are more than $100.

Check hostel prices for your destination with Hostelbookers and find the best Romania hotel deals with Trivago.

Food & Drink in Romania

You see lots of stuffed cabbage rolls, sausages, bland chicken and pork dishes, stews, salads made with mayonnaise, whole fish breaded and tossed in a pan, and soups seemingly made with whatever is lying around. It’s tough eating Romanian and being a vegetarian, though it gets better in the summer when more fresh veggies are available. On the plus side, it’s easy to find something filling for cheap. Many popular restaurants offer specials to lure you in. Set lunch menus with multiple courses are a good deal and many spots have special deals for students and the elderly. Some will toss in a free glass of house wine.

The best part of your meal is often dessert, like this specialty pictured below.

Street snacks and pastries: 30 cents to $1.25

Budget sit-down meal: $3 to $5

Nice restaurant meal in tourist area: $5 to $15 (It’s hard to spend much more than $30 each anywhere without being a glutton.)

Beer: $1.50 to $2.50 at a bar, much less in a store or at happy hour.

Wine: $3-$5 at a store and not much more in a restaurant (markups are usually less than double). You can get the very best local wines, which are surprisingly good, for less than $15 in a store.

Palinca or Tuica distilled fruit liquor: 75 cents to $2 a glass in a bar/restaurant, $3 a liter for dubious home brew sold in the markets, $4 – $8 for a commercial bottle.

Coffee or soda: 70 cents to $1.50

Transportation in Romania

You can generally get around pretty cheaply in Romania. The train system hits most anywhere you want to go and you can get to most spots in the country from Bucharest the same day. If you travel with the locals, you’ll pay what they do, which is reasonable in second class. Buses are in the same ballpark, but can be more frequent.

Trains: $10 from Bucharest to Braşov. A 100km train trip is generally $5 – $9. Internationally, the 14-hour ride from Bucharest to Budapest is around $75 in a reclining seat. I splurged $90 for a sleeper berth from Budapest to Sighisoara and ended up having the entire compartment to myself.

Buses: from the capital to towns in the Transylvania region will come in under $15. Shorter rides between towns are just a few dollars.

Bucharest airport to the center: the taxi fare should be around $15, but can balloon to $30 or $45 from the scammers if not arranged in advance. The shuttle bus is only $2.

Taxis: when they use the meter like they’re supposed to, less than 50 cents per kilometer.

Local buses, trolleys, and trams: 30 to 70 cents per ride depending on whether you purchase a pass. A 10-trip subway pass in the capital is less than $3.

Admission and Activity Charges in Romania

Skiing: one-day lift tickets $20-$45 (on a point system determined by which lifts and how many rides you take). Rentals are around $15 a day.

Museums and churches/monasteries: free or $2 – $4, only a few more than $6. The King’s Peleș Castle outside Sinaia costs much, much more.

Ice skating: in the winter, you can go ice skating at outdoor facilities for $4 – $7

Biking: rentals start at $4 an hour or $12 for a day for a good quality bike.

Most travelers don’t see much of the Buda side of Budapest when they visit Hungary’s capital. Few make it any further than the Fisherman’s Bastion and maybe Buda Castle.

It’s understandable as most of the bars, restaurants, and hotels are on the flat Pest side. But Buda has the greeenery—and the Children’s Train.

I probably wouldn’t have even known about this train had I not gone out on a cool tour with Underguide that spent the day on the other side of the river. (Remember that when you automatically pooh-pooh guided tours: some of them rock.) We took a series of metro rides and trams, then hiked the last bit to the starting point. So getting there was part of the fun too.

Here’s what the ride was like:

This is one of those classic narrow-gauge trains that bumps along old tracks. This one passes through forests and behind some grand homes in the hills. It’s a world away from the compressed urban grid of Pest.

It’s called the Children’s Train because kids aged 10-14 join a program to work there, taking tickets and giving signals to conductors when the tracks are clear. The tickets are a bargain at about $3 one-way, or $1.50 for children.

When you get to the end, you can turn around and come back or follow a path to a chairlift going up and down the mountain. I’d advise taking it down as you get terrific views of the mansion districts and the city spread out before you. The chairlift is slightly more than the train, around $3.25 one way.

See more on the Children’s Railway site in English.

In many respects, Bulgaria is the best travel deal in Europe. Many of the prices I’ve cited below are the cheapest you’ll find on the continent (for any place visited by travelers anyway).

Some of that advantage is offset by the language barrier and alphabet though, so it can be better to pay a bit more and have some guidance than to learn enough Bulgarian to do it completely independently. If nothing else, bring a good phrase book.

This is primarily a rural country with small towns and villages. The second-largest city after Sofia has fewer than half a million people and it drops off fast after that. Come for nature, adventure, skiing, history, and hearty food at bargain prices. This is a great country for hiking, with hut-to-hut options at reasonable prices. Skiing is half the price of the Alps, but with some very high mountains to swoosh down.

You can read a nice feature story I wrote after my trip through the country in late April here: From Red to Green in Bulgaria.

Exchange rate at the time of this post was close to 1.5 lev to the U.S. dollar and 2 to the euro. Easy math, but I did it for you below into dollars.

Hotel & Hostel Prices in Bulgaria

Where foreigners go, there are plenty of cheap places to stay to choose from. Off the beaten path though, you may end up with a homestay or simple guesthouse. This is a place where two/three people traveling together can up their comfort level significantly: a private room for two/three is generally just double/triple the cost of a hostel bed. Internet is usually included, often breakfast is as well.

Hostel bed or private double in a cheap hotel:  $9-$16 per person.

Basic room at a monastery: $20 – $24 double

Guesthouse room near a national park: $15 – $30 double

Mid-range (3-star equivalent) independent hotel – $35 – $60 double

International chain hotel: (mostly in Sofia)  $70 – $160 double

Search cheap Bulgaria hotels on HostelWorld or Hostelbookers. 

Food & Drink Prices in Bulgaria

Some of the cheapest beer in Europe, tasty food grown near where you’re eating it, and a wide array of firewater for bargain prices. You won’t spend a lot of money to eat well or have your own private party when traveling through Bulgaria. What’s not to like? Well if you’re a vegan or a tea-totaler, a lot. Everything is served with cheese or yogurt and alcohol is cheaper than soda.

Otherwise, there’s plenty to look forward to here. Portion sizes are as huge as in the U.S. and it’s perfectly acceptable to ask for a second plate to split an order.

Street food and sandwiches:  50 cents – $2.

Typical restaurant meal: $4 – $10 for several courses.

Typical menu prices for food: soups/salads $1.50 – $3, mains $2 – $6, desserts 50 cents to $1.50.

Beer: 50 – 80 cents a liter in stores, $1 – $2.50 in a bar/restaurant for a liter depending on decor.

Wine: $1.40 – $2.50 a liter for homemade or a house wine glass in a restaurant, $4 – $8 in a restaurant for a typical bottle, $8 – $14 for the best. Bottle in stores $3 – 8 average.

Liquor: As little as 75¢ for a shot of raki (firewater distilled from grapes or plums) in a bar, but generally $1 – $2. Local vodka $2, imports $3 – $9.

Non-alcoholic drinks: herbal tea & water cheapest (40-80 cents), coffee $1 or so, soda usually more than beer or raki.

Fruit & vegetables – sold in season, not much imported, generally $1.40 a kilo or less for peppers, cabbage, potatoes, greens, grapes, plums, peaches, turnips, etc. Strawberries and fancy mushrooms more.

Dairy products – yogurt around $1 a liter, milk $1.50, cheese $4 – $6 a kilo fresh, $8 – $10 aged.

Transportation for Travelers in Bulgaria

Once you figure out how to get to where you’re going here, transportation is very cheap. With the local minimum wage being around 120 euros a month, many public transportation options are subsidized to keep them affordable to locals.

Taxi fares: 40 – 70¢ per kilometer

Local buses, metro, and streetcars: 75¢

Inter-city trains: The longest regular route is the $25 Sofia/Varna round trip in 2nd class. Sofia to Plovdiv is under $10 one way. 1st class is around 40% more.

Inter-city buses: prices are roughly the same as the train at $3 to $12 one-way, but are faster on some routes.

Admission Charges and Activities

It won’t cost you much to go sightseeing here. Only the Rila Monastery gets busloads of foreign tourists and that’s free (like all churches and monasteries here) unless you want to visit the museum or tower. I visited stunning caverns, amazing citadels, and a great ethnographic village, all for 4 lev each (<$3),

Museums & attractions: most $1.50 – $4 adult, half for kids/students.

Churches & monasteries – free

National park trails: free

Skiing: $12 – $15 rentals, $20 – $38 for walk-up all-day lift ticket.

Bike rental: $1.50 – $4 an hour, less for all day.

Other Travel Prices in Bulgaria

You can go river rafting, rock climbing, ice climbing, or cycling here on tours to suit your interests. Here’s a link with typical prices for booking adventure tours with a local expert.

If you’ve got money to invest, real estate prices here are among the best values I’ve seen anywhere in the world. I frequently saw houses for sale for under 20,000 euros and really nice places in prime areas almost never topped 100K euros in the real estate office windows. More on that later in my annual “cheapest places to live” post, coming next week.

In my recent jaunt through the countries that are the best value in Europe, I spent the last of it in one of my favorite cities: Budapest. Last time I was there I was using it as a base to explore other parts of the country, but this time I just stayed put and soaked up the atmosphere of Buda and Pest.

Imagine visiting your local wine bar and ordering three different varieties from assorted regions, being served by someone who can explain the climate there and what awards that vintner has won. The chalk board list behind the bar has over 100 wines by the glass to choose from and there’s something for every taste. The interior is elegant and the location is perfect, right across from a busy pedestrian plaza fronting the city’s huge historic cathedral. It’s the kind of place you could linger for hours, but how much is it going to cost you when the bill comes?

$8.50 with tip.

That’s what I spent at the best wine bar in Budapest. For three glasses that took my taste buds on a terrific ride, from three distinct wine regions of Hungary.

I bring that up first because it’s emblematic of the appeal of Hungary. This is not the ideal bargain backpacker city and it’s thronged with tourists that are firmly in the middle of the pack budget-wise. After all, the Hungarians consider themselves “Central Europe” and they are right next to expensive Austria. They’re on the Danube, with docking river cruise ships a defining feature of the waterfront. So this is a value destination, but the best deals are for those on a vacation budget rather than a shoestring budget. Think “value” more than “cheap.”

As I write this though, Europe is a financial mess and Hungary is doing worse than many others. It’s part of the EU, but is not on the euro, so when that currency falls, the forint often falls even more because of domestic problems. You can currently get 230 forints for a U.S. dollar. I can’t promise you that’s going to last, so keep exchange rates in mind if you land on this post later—I’m writing this in mid-2012 and used 220 to the dollar for my calculations.

Hotel and hostel prices in Budapest

Budapest is a very popular city. There are bargains in hotel prices, but they’re more like getting a Four Seasons room for under $350 than finding a great budget room for $15. The sweet spot of choice is between $60 and $100 a night, where you’ll often find 40 places or more to choose from on sites like HotelsCombined or Expedia. But I strongly advise using Hotwire, because that’s when you see the true bargains. Searching mid-July prices right now, there are 3-star hotels for under $35, 4-star ones for under $45, and one 5-star one listed for $67!

Real estate has historically been pretty cheap here, so there are probably at least 50 hostels to choose from. Expect to pay between $12 and $18 a night for a bed in a dorm room, which is certainly better than most countries west of here in Europe. Check Hostelbookers.com, where there’s no booking fee.  Internet is free at every hostel and most hotels 3-star or less. Many include breakfast, where you’ll see plenty of protein on the trays.

Food and drink prices in Budapest

If you’re a tourist on vacation, Budapest will feel like a terrific bargain come dinnertime. Sure, you can spend $200 each on a 6-course tasting menu at the city’s finest restaurant if you want, but you can normally have a very fine cloth-napkin dinner with wine for $15. If you eat at more humble places, a soup will be a dollar or two and main dishes range from $3 to $7. For my last dinner in town, for example, I had soup, a paprika pepper stuffed with ground pork, bread, and two glasses of house wine for under $10. I walked down the street and got a $1.25 strudel pastry that was terrific.

If you buy things in the market for a picnic or self-catering, prices are at the low end for Europe, say a tad more than Bulgaria but a lot less than Germany. You can get rolls for 10-25 cents each or a huge baguette for a dollar or less. Get 100 grams (around 1/5 of a pound) of good cheese for a dollar, 100 grams of good local sausage for $2, and a jar of pickled veggies for another dollar or so.

For a buck or less, you can generally buy 100 grams of any of these things in the market: raisins, peanuts, sunflower seeds, banana chips, or dried apricots. For a buck or less you can get a kilo of seasonal fruit or peppers, cabbage, potatoes, radishes, or carrots. I saw a big bunch of white asparagus for about a dollar when I was there. How much do you pay for that in your local farmer’s market?

As in most of the old Iron Curtain countries, alcoholic drinks are the real bargains. (Some say alcohol is what really fuels RyanAir’s business: all those Western European residents flying to cheaper cities to get wasted on cheap booze.) The weekend streets of Pest are filled with hen and stag weekend revelers buying $1-$2 beers in the pubs—less at happy hour—and shots of palinka for even less. The latter, which is distilled liquor make from plums or other fruit, ranges from 50 cents for the rot-gut versions to $3 for something refined you can sip before dinner. Almost anywhere though you can get a small glass for around a euro, straight up or in a cocktail.

Hungarian wine should be known around the world, but the Soviet occupation days seriously hurt its reputation and the recovery will be a long one. So for now it’s one of the best bargains in Europe. Sample a lot of it here and you’ll be glad you did. You can find a decent bottle in a store for $2, something quite good for $4 to $8. If you spend over $10 you might end up with something from a “winemaker of the year” who has adorned local magazine covers. In general, get reds from the south or Eger, whites from Lake Balaton, and dessert wine from Tokaj.

This once being part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, you can get a killer coffee and pastry here just as you can in Vienna—but for literally 1/4 the price. After you do a double-take at your low bill in a wine bar, finish with a coffee and dessert for another nice surprise.

Transportation prices in Budapest

My biggest negative surprise in Budapest was how expensive the subway has gotten for locals. The cheapest ticket (5 stops or less) is a dollar but a longer one is $1.50. A 24-hour pass is $6, a monthly one $45. If you get the local Budapest card—see the end of this post for a giveaway—unlimited subway rides are included.

A taxi from the airport to the center is around $35, but going the other way it’s half that. In general you can get around the center in a cab for $2 to $5.

The locals are bike-crazy and a lot of the main avenues have marked bike lanes. Some hotels and hostels have loaner bikes available, but you can also find rental kiosks with prices from $5 for four hours to $9-$12 for 24 hours.

I rode a cool narrow gauge Children’s Train on the Pest side of the city when I went on a tour with a Budapest Underguide. That was $6 one way, half for students. We took the chairlift down that mountain and that was around $3.

Museums and attractions in Budapest

This is not a city where you want to go on a whirlwind sightseeing tour unless you’re using the Budapest card. That gets you a discount of 10-50% and free admission to a few (like the zoo). The card is 3900 forint for 24 hours, or about $18.

Otherwise, some attractions and museums are free, like the Fisherman’s Bastion and the cool central bank visitor center, which is a money museum. Others, like the depressing but fascinating House of Terror Museum, cost money but are worth it. That one’s $9. The popular Memento Park, with all the old communist statues, is $7. The public baths Budapest is famous for are also going to cost you. Non-locals pay $16 for an unlimited time of soaking and steaming at the major ones.

Win a Budapest Card!

The Hungarian Tourism people covered some of my expenses in Budapest as I am writing a feature story on the city for another publication and updating my book. They gave me two Budapest Cards but I only needed one. So courtesy of Hungary Tourism, I’m giving away I gave away a free 24-hour Budapest Card that’s good until March of 2013 to Josh A. of Louisville, KY. He”ll get unlimited local transportation and loads of discounts on attractions and restaurants. Congrats Josh—have fun!

Thanks to all who commented below to enter, telling me when you’re going, what attracted you to Hungary, and where you live.

 

Even most experienced travelers don’t know much about Bulgaria, even though it’s one of the best—if not the best—values in Europe. It’s also got far more green space than most of the other more crowded EU countries.

This was the third stop on my Eastern European jaunt. (See Why Travel to Slovakia? and A Little Taste of Transylvania for the other round-ups.) As a writer, it’s the one I found most interesting, to the point there will be a story on my trip there in the next issue of Perceptive Travel. That’s because I went in with very few preconceptions and was happily surprised on a daily basis. Sure, it’s rough around the edges, but that’s a big part of the appeal: you don’t share any stretch of sidewalk anywhere with hundreds of package tourists disgorged from a tour bus or river cruise ship. Which leads us to the the first point:

In Bulgaria, you can still feel like an explorer.

When you get settled into a backpacker circuit these days, it’s easy to feel like you’re shuffling along a path so well-worn that it might as well be a moving sidewalk in an airport. Around you are hundreds, maybe thousands of people doing the same things you are, posting the same photos, just like thousands of people did before you got there. In Bulgaria, if there are a dozen foreigners in one restaurant it’s an anomaly. I only remember seeing one tour bus in mid-May, at the deserving UNESCO World Heritage Rila Monastery pictured below. With the strange alphabet, strange language, wide open spaces, and relatively removed geography, Bulgaria just doesn’t get the big crowds. Coming here still feels like an adventure.

Good “Slow Food” for Great Prices.

The newish trend of seeking out “slow food” destinations and “farm to table” restaurants gets a big chuckle here. That’s just the way everyone eats, all the time. Every house has a grape vine trellis and a little garden plot. Supermarkets are far outnumbered by open village markets and roadside veggie stands. People eat what’s in season and can/pickle for the winter, just like they always did. Despite eating a staggering amount of dairy—especially white cheese and yogurt—this is a much healthier looking population than the one I live with in the USA. I’ll do a post later on prices, but take my word for it that you’ll double-check your exchange rate calculations the first few times you see a menu. The wine and beer are consistently good too and rakia (liquor distilled from grapes, plums, or other fruit) is practically free.

One Third of Bulgaria is Protected Green Space

In much of western and central Europe, there’s very little old growth forest left and a lot of woodland has been replaced by an expanding population. In Bulgaria they still complain about the Ottomans cutting down their trees way back when and lament how the Soviets would have cut down more if it hadn’t been so much trouble and distance to transport the logs. I’m used to seeing a lot of deforestation in developing countries, especially where some people still cook over a wood fire, but here the mountains here are a rolling carpet of green and you constantly pass dense forests while on the roadways. This means…

Impressive Hiking Options

I was a guest of Odysseia-In Tour Company in Bulgaria. When you take a look at what’s offered on their Bulgaria Hiking site, it’s hard to believe you can do all this in a country most people can’t even find on a map. There are three major mountain ranges, two of them a short hop from Sofia, and you can do multi-day hikes staying in organized mountain huts with cafes or staying in villages guesthouses. You can hike around glacial lakes, visit painted monasteries, see ancient castles, pass roaring waterfalls, and take in the panoramic vistas. Besides the great experience, reaching nearly 3,000 meters, the prices are excellent. Around $100 per person or less for a guided tour with accommodation and 2 meals a day. Check out this hiking tour as an example. (And yes, you can set up snowshoeing or mountain biking if you’d like. Or a kayaking/rafting trip.)

Veliko Turnovo

The historic town of Plovdiv, with its Roman ruins and interesting architecture, gets more visitors because it’s an easy trip from Sofia. But if I could return to one spot in Bulgaria and linger for a while, it would be Veliko Turnova. Under different conditions, this is the kind of place that normally gets trampled in the blink of an eye. Just from the look and feel, you would expect it to be overrun with hostels and backpacker cafes in the tradition of Chefchaouen, Luang Prabang, Hoi An, San Cristobal de Las Casa, or Hampi. Then the adventurous independent travelers with more money would follow, and it would suddenly get on the radar of the glossy magazines. It would, that is, if more people knew about it and the town weren’t so far off the beaten track. It is on the train line from Istanbul to Bucharest though, so explore that option—just don’t tell everyone yet. Here’s what it costs to stay in a hostel there and my hotel with the great view below, Hotel Gurko, runs 35 to 60 euros double with breakfast.

The Best Ski Deals in Europe

I visited in May, after the ski season ended, but I did spend a little time in one ski village and got a look at prices and the mountain trails. The most expensive walk-up one-day lift ticket in the country is under US$40 and that’s for a place where you can catch a gondola right in the center of town that takes you to the summit. Some are half that amount. I saw full equipment rental signs all over the place for 10 euros a day ($13). Think you can’t afford a ski chalet? Maybe you can here. In Bansko I saw multiple 1BR condos for sale for less than 20,000 euros, many larger ones with a view going for what works out to $60 a square foot. See more info here on Bansko.

***

Yes, there are some drawbacks. It’s not easy being a totally independent traveler here and canvassing the country unless you’ve got both a good phrase book and a good guidebook. There’s usually someone around who speaks English in places that get some tourists, but in others not so much and the alphabet takes some effort to figure out. Like many countries that were behind the iron curtain for decades, you see a fair bit of ugly architecture and buildings falling apart from the “fast and functional” construction. Overall though, Bulgaria is a breath of fresh air—often literally.

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