I've toured (road only) multiple times all over Western and much of Eastern Europe, but not yet in Romania. Most trips were planned and taken before the Internet began to dominate trip planning and reserving overnight accommodations (specifically B&Bs, pensions, zimmer frei, sobe) and the last two subsequently (2019 and 2022).

So, for those of you who have recent road cycle touring experience in Romania, here are my questions for a trip in April-May or September.

1) Can cyclists simply show up in late afternoon in most any town, village or city in Romania today and reasonably expect to secure one or two rooms for the night within a short time as I've easily done on 95% of my trips abroad? Favorite B&Bs and guesthouses?

2) Or, is that basically no longer possible since most travelers are reserving rooms today many months in advance as, for example, in Ireland?

3) What are road conditions like in Romania? Well maintained? Uneven surfaces? Mixed? Other?

4) What are the attitudes of Romanian drivers to cyclists on the roadways? Respectful, patient and courteous? Hostile? Other?

5) For grand scenery, history and culture, what regions of the country should I consider?

Thanks for any and all of your shared experiences.

I toured in Romania in '21 and I enjoyed it very much, exceeded my expectations even. Great scenery, lots of history and culture and exotic enough (for a country belonging to the EU) to keep things exciting.

Top regions for me: hilly Maramures, on the northern border with Ukraine. Famous for it's wooden churches and the part of Romania where old traditions seem to resist disappearing most successfully.
The Danube delta. East of Tulcea there are virtually no more roads and boats replace cars, but you're still 70 km away from the shoreline proper. If you're a bird watcher, this region will blow your mind.
And of course, Transsylvania, with old German villages, weerkerken (fortified churches) and scary looking castles. Don't get bit! This region felt less touristy than I expected and I had a great time.
Crossing the Carpathians via one of the famous passes (Transfagarasan or Transalpina) is certainly impressive but you will not be alone. Avoid riding there during the weekend. Moldavia in the NE was nice too, a sparsely populated, agricultural area that felt a little forgotten, lots of secondary roads that not yet had been paved.

Romania has an extensive network of tertiary roads with only local traffic and that's where you want to ride. These roads will not often be in great shape and some of them are unpaved (which adds to the riding experience IMO). Some of the bigger roads have intense truck traffic and are downright dangerous, Romania is a poor country (again, for the EU) and public infrastructure tends to be on the shabby side (narrow bridges, crumbling shoulders full of debris etc). I don't recall any crazy or hostile driver behaviour though (unlike Albania or southern Italy), just stay clear of the main roads.

I travel with a tent and only occasionally take a room (like in Bucharest or Sibiu) so can't comment on the availability of accommodation. My guess is this won't be a problem except maybe in high summer in some of the more well-known places. Plenty of camp-sites were small (and fun), sometimes of the in-my-garden variant, which leads me to think that there might be a lot of locals renting out spare rooms.

All What CMAW said! ;)

Have been three time in Romania, 2014, 2015, 2018. many little roads possible, also infinite gravel roads. Many many roads haven been fixed the last years, good for Romanians, I don't like that, I prefer bad roads, means most of the time less traffic.
I liked all Romania, get lost .... most I like Maramuresch and Bucovina, Bucovina is very special. Danube delta also great!
Transfagarasan ist great! but! skip it on weekends! and/or start VERY early, means 6:30-7AM you enter Transfagarasan, than you will have the road for you alone. Be aware of bears on Transfagarasan, stupid tourists made it their hobby to feed them, now they are roaming around that road.
Should be no problem to find rooms, anyway I would book the day before or in the morning while having lunch stop.
Have mushroom dishes! Impressive the tons of mushrooms they take out of the woods.

Here some visual motivation if you feel like:

https://stefanrohner.exposure.co/romania

https://stefanrohner.exposure.co/romania-1

https://flic.kr/s/aHskhcNTy5


""WC"" on Transfagarasan ;)

CMAW,

Thank you for all the helpful information, just what I was hoping to get! Where did you stay in Bucharest? Do the main roads have ridable shoulders or are cyclists condemed to mingle with hig-speed traffic?

Stefan,

Thanks for the advice and sharing your experience in Romania. Love that photo of the two old gents sharing a bottle of moonshine! Or is that apple juice?!

I took a room in a cheap hotel close to the Bucharest central train station, was fine except for a bunch of mosquitos...
Regarding traffic, I had a pretty bad experience in the NE, main road to Suceava. I needed to get there asap, for the sake of replacing a broken shoe and a torn sleeping pad, so instead of meandering through the countryside, I opted for the "quick and dirty" DN17 in order to arrive before shop closing time. That road had no shoulders, was narrow and in bad condition and full of trucks. A pretty stressful day in the saddle as I recall. On the other hand, riding out of Bucharest in NW direction proved easy enough, so it really depends. Recently renovated roads were mostly OK, but as I said, most of the time it's easy to avoid the main roads and stay on the smaller ones. In fact, 'cycling Romania' is limited to the banks of the Danube, EV6 is probably one of the most popular long distance cycle routes in Europe. But everywhere else, especially in the north and the east, there's no specific cycling infrastructure and touring cyclists are scarce. Villagers will sometimes greet you with that slightly bewildered look typical of the Balkans and Turkey: "he's a tourist so he must be rich, he rides a bike so he must be poor." The Romanian countryside is also the last place in Europe where you get to share the road with horse-drawn carts with a family and a few sacks of potatoes, or a guy who goes around sharpening knives and scissors. That in itself is a reason to go there IMO, it will be gone soon enough.



Literally the first cyclists I met after 3 weeks in Romania.

Very helpful information indeed. Thanks! I'm looking for connections with people in the countryside as you describe, yet need exposure to "civilization" (pubs, restaurants, etc.) as well. That's an apt quote about how some Eastern Europeans and others view cyclists from the West.

When biking up the Nile Valley years ago, we were sometimes accosted by hordes of children running toward us, hands out, screaming "baksheesh!" (money, bribe). A few times they even tried to steal gear bungied to our rear racks, resulting in some adult whacking them with a stick! To them we must have also seemed rich, and the two blonds in our group must have looked like aliens to them.

Generally speaking, what's the climate like in Romania in April-May and September? I want to avoid the summer heat and crowds.

I found this unattributed quote years ago and liked it so much it's now taped to my computer monitor stand: "The lingua franca in these parts is Romanian mixed with blood and cash". It evokes a scene from a Kirk Douglas film in which he's forced into hand-to-hand combat with a Romanian villager for the hand - or perhaps the honor - of a young maiden while everyone else looks on as if it's just part of daily life there. And it probably was.

If you go real rural what is the nice part of Romania you will not find many restaurants. you will find bars, beer places with snacks.
In April you can be unlucky and have rain.... better May or September.

second day Romania 2014
don't break your femur! ;) my friend left upper corner in Targu Muresh hospital. He got three screws, today he cycles with a titanium femur.
hospital bathroom.

Thanks for the weather tip.

How did your friend manage to break his femur? If that's a hospital bathroom, I cringe at the thought of what one in a cheap hotel looks like! I don't recall that they were that awful in Egypt.

Going deeply off-topic here, apologies, but I'm a bit of a movie buff so this sparked my curiosity. The whole wide web has one measly reference in store for this quote, and it's to a grammar handbook titled The Deluxe Transitive Vampire*. A grammar handbook! I also took a look at Kirk Douglas' filmography but at least at first glance, no movie came up in which Kirk roams the Romanian countryside and gets into fights with villagers (he did direct a Western shot in Yugoslavia though!). But then it occurred to me thatyou may not have a specific movie in mind but just a vivid analogy: in my mind this plays out like a scene from a 50ies movie with Kirk Douglas? In which case I could shut down the part of my brain that's wondering "what movie is he talking about???"

* makes sense: vampire, Romania + blood

Flat off road, very slow we have been, he thinks he wanted to avoid a pothole and fell, without any speed. They took him with a helicopter to the hospital, we have been 120km from Targu Mures deep in the country side. I was standing there with two loaded bikes in the middle of nowhere ;) late afternoon.
Started to ask farmers if they could take me to the next village, most looked surprised, one guy with two bikes .... after talking and talking I got a lift, the two bikes and me on a hay wagon, I was invited to stay with the family, the next day I left the bikes there in a stable and took a train and taxi to the hospital.
Entering the hospital I noticed that I had forgot my phone in the taxi! Problem: I could not call my phone since when in holidays I have a forward to my office. I took a taxi back to the train station (50km) and started to ask taxi drivers for the guy who drove me to the hospital, nobody knew anything, but I did not stop asking, after 1h investigating taxi
drivers one newly arrived driver knew that a friend of his drove me to the hospital, we drove to his house and he was happy to see me again, me too! I had my phone back.
At first the hospital was a shock, but soon we found out that social unity in that room was fantastic, visiting families brought food what was shared in-between all people in the room. Everybody was very very helpful these days!
The intervention was very well made (doctors home in Netherlands told him), two long screws they put in. But they also told him that at his age (50) most probably the femur will no heal well and that maybe later he would need a prothesis.

Quite the stories they are, illustrative of the kindness of strangers and the serendipity of bicycle travel!

How is your friend doing now? Still riding, I hope. Proof indeed that people will help you wherever you are, and that you don't necessarily need triple insurance.

He is fine, cycling, we did several trips together after his accident, Romania, Georgia 2x, Spain several times. Last summer he did the GDMBR with his daughter. Beginning 2019 he got a titanium hip.

Kerry, if you can, explore the Danube Delta and Villages by boat, that must be a great place inside the delta. Yesterday we saw a Romanian film what played there, looked very nice!

This route looks very interesting.

About Via Transilvanica

Via Transilvanica, the "road that unites", is a 1,400 kilometer long distance trail, a tourist route that crosses Romania diagonally from Putna to Drobeta Turnu Severin. It's designed for hiking, cycling and horse riding. Via Transilvanica is marked with painted markers, signposts and at every kilometer, there is an individually carved andesite stone, therefore all these milestones can probably become the longest art gallery in the world, which accompanies travelers along the way.

The trail crosses ten counties (administrative units of the country): Suceava, Bistrița-Năsăud, Mureș, Harghita, Sibiu, Brașov, Alba, Hunedoara, Caraș-Severin and Mehedinți and is divided into seven cultural-historical regions: Bucovina, Highlands, Terra Siculorum, Terra Saxonum, Terra Dacica, Terra Banatica, Terra Romana. In total, Via Transilvanica crosses 107 administrative-territorial units in Romania, and highlights the natural and cultural heritage of each region.

Via Transilvanica is a long-distance trail inspired by the history of other such trails in Europe, North America and beyond. But above all, it is a social project, so the focus is on the community. The project aims to bring to light places in the country, seemingly forgotten by the world and largely depopulated due to economic limitations, and bring them to life. This revival is due to the backpackers who, after a long day on the trails, expect a minimum of hospitality and at least one welcoming face to share stories with. This is what the road that unites is all about.

https://www.viatransilvanica.com/en/map/

Stefan,

Loved the nature scenes, the people, animals, the eternally blue skies and the narration in this beautiful video. But as I wrote in my initial posting, I tour on paved roads only. If you can recommend any particularly scenic regions of Romania, towns, cities and historic sites I should not miss, I'm all ears as we say.