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.

I’m making my way through the cheaper countries of Europe right now, finding good values all over compared to their neighbors to the west. Next stop, Romania. 

I spent most of my time in Transylvania, which I’ll discuss without mentioning any mythical creatures of the night. This is the area where most travelers gravitate to if they’ve got some time, which they rightfully should. It’s a gorgeous area with well-preserved buildings from the medieval times through Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and more, with a strong Saxon/German influence.

The photo at the very top and the one to the right are from where I arrived on an overnight train headed east: Sighisoara. How can you even say that name without smiling? Yeah, it’s a tourist trap town, but a deserving one. Plus once half the tour buses pull out at the end of the day, it’s a lovely place to hang out and absorb the feeling of living in history.

It costs about $3 to tour the citadel, a couple dollars more for a taxi to the center from the train station, and there are hostels with beds for $10-$12. There’s also a campground outside of town with lots of facilities.

The next shot is from Sibiu, which is not as photogenic or hilly, but feels more like a real city than an open-air museum. There’s a long pedestrian-only street filled with bars, shops, and restaurants and it’s a lively scene at night. This was a European Capital of Culture a few years back. You can sit down and get a half-liter beer for a dollar and you can get 3 covrigs (simits in Turkey) for another dollar, so what’s not to like?

It’s not all about the buildings though. With high mountains in many directions, the scenery alone is often worth stopping for. This is the view from a monastery I visited. If you’ve gotta be a monk, seeing this every day would make it a bit easier. (You can spend the night there for about $16 double.)

I always ask myself when traveling to different places, could I live here? I didn’t really feel a yes anywhere in Romania until I got to Brasov. It’s near multiple ski slopes, it’s an easy train ride to the capital, and has another one of those long pedestrian streets full of fun places to eat and drink. And it’s got mountains right next to it. That’s a pic from a nice spring day above.

More later on prices, a real article later in Perceptive Travel, but for now some images to ponder from Romania. As with Slovakia, this is definitely a destination worth visiting, budget reasons or not. But if you are on a budget, this place is a great value.

Over the holidays one uncle of mine talked wistfully of a motorcycle trip he took in Mexico “a while back” and went on about how incredibly cheap it was to eat out, swill tequila, and follow it up with a few Mexican beer chasers for a buck or two. He has lost track of time, like we often do, and is looking back at a bygone era. A time before NAFTA, before liquor conglomerates snatched up every tequila company with more than two employees, before the whole Mexican beer industry consolidated to just two companies with half-foreign ownership.

I’ve overheard the following phrase applied to places where the bargains are long gone: “It was so cheap there—you’ve gotta go check it out!”

Next time someone tells you that, be sure to ask, “When did you go?”

Ask any war vet grandpa about his weeks on leave and depending on how old he is he’ll tell you great stories about how he spent $5 on a whole weekend with a Bangkok hottie and eight bottles of Mekhong, or how he bought wine for 50 cents a gallon in Italy and you could buy four movie tickets with a Hershey’s bar. (Unfortunately, today’s troops are caught in barren lands with no booze or babes, so their “you shouldda been there” stories are gonna suck badly decades from now.)

So where am I going with all this? Well last month there were some stats in one of those 1999-2009 wrap-ups that blew my mind. This story was about rising affluence around the world. The illustration at the top of this post is internet penetration growth during the decade, with the small circles being 1999 and the large one being last year. Go check it out for a minute and look at Vietnam and India. I cropped it to just show Europe and Asia, but it’s the same dramatic explosion in countries like Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil. More knowledge, more education, more opportunity, a higher standard of living. Too bad for you, shoestring backpacker, as it means you’re no longer the only one with two pence to scratch together—or an ATM card.

But in a small column at the side in this newspaper article was something even more dramatic. Here’s the change in the portion of population in these countries with a disposable income above $10,000, in percentage points. In other words, 84.2 % more Slovakians earn at least $10k above basic living expenses over the course of a year compared to just a decade before. That’s huge.

Slovakia – 84.2%

Romania – 76.7%

Czech Republic – 75%

Hungary – 70.9%

Croatia – 68%

Poland – 56.8%

So next time someone tells you about how you can eat a five-course dinner in Eastern Europe served by guys in tuxedos while drinking two bottles of vodka and having a 20-piece orchestra play in the background for $8 apiece, you might want to ready a follow-up question. “When did you say you were there again…?”

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Will Romania be a new hotspot? I read a few weeks ago that Time Out Bucharest is now on the stands, which is a sure sign that hipsters and intrepid travelers are going there and sticking around a while. Now comes this report, which says that Romania is the 4th fastest-growing country in the world in terms of tourism demand. That’s starting from a very low base, I’m sure, so a dramatic rise is not so difficult, but it’s still noteworthy.

Romania is actually replacing the Czech Republic in my next edition of The World’s Cheapest Destinations. The latter has gotten a lot more expensive with the EU-alignment and the scads of moneyed vacationers popping in for a short time in Prague, so Romania is the next value frontier. (Joining Turkey, Bulgaria, and Hungary in the Europe section).

I have to admit I liked Bucharest a lot when I was there, even though I was there against my will. I naively thought that despite only spending $350 for a flight from India to New York I would be home in time for my welcome back clubbing plans. Four days later I got to New York, after a mandatory vacation for three days with no luggage. My flight was on Tarom Airlines–’nuff said.

I always figured that my favorable impression was influenced by the fact I had arrived there at just the point I was ready to strangle the whole population of India. Bucharest seemed downright efficient and super-civilized, the travel equivalent of a deep breath and a sigh. The architecture was interesting (what hadn’t been flattened during communism that is), the streets were clean, the subway worked, and the beer was good. I was a happy camper.

Of course the real payoff is in beautiful Transylvania, where I hope to get to before word gets out and it becomes completely overrun. If you’re heading to Europe sometime soon, put it on your list and beat the crowds.

Oh, and if you want to see what governments and tourism boards talk about in their branding meetings–read the report in the link above. It’s no accident that some destinations are better than others at pulling in the crowds. Give a good budget to the MBAs and the advertising execs and who knows what kind of rabbit will come out of the hat.