Bucharest

Currency

Romania is in the EU but keeps the leu, and prices quoted to tourists in euros are always worse than paying in lei. Exchange houses (casă de schimb valutar) in the centre give near-interbank rates and must display the commission — walk away from any that will not. Skip the airport counters, and never change money with someone who approaches you in the street.

ATMs & cards

Use bank machines — Banca Transilvania, BCR, BRD, ING or Raiffeisen — and decline the machine’s offer to charge you in your own currency, every time. Euronet ATMs are all over the Old Town and the airport and cost several euros plus a bad rate. Cards work almost everywhere, including on buses and in village shops; Romania is closer to cashless than most of Western Europe.

Romania is close to cashless — cards work on buses, in markets and in village shops, so you may need very little cash at all.

Wherever you are: if the machine offers to charge you in your home currency, decline. That is dynamic currency conversion and the rate is set by the ATM's operator, not your bank.

Safety

Very safe for violent crime, and safer at night than most Western European capitals. The risks are financial and traffic-related: take only a taxi you booked in an app (Bolt, Uber or Speed Taxi) rather than one that offers itself outside the airport or the station, watch your pockets on packed rush-hour trams, and treat pedestrian crossings as advisory — drivers do.

Our own assessment, not a sourced index.

Entry & visa

Health & emergencies

Required to enter

No vaccinations are required for entry from Europe or North America.

Worth having

• Routine vaccinations up to date
• Tick-borne encephalitis if you will be walking in Carpathian forest between spring and autumn
• Rabies if you plan to work with animals or spend long periods in remote countryside

Getting treated

EU/EEA and Swiss visitors are treated on the same terms as residents with an EHIC or GHIC card; UK visitors use a GHIC. Everyone else pays, and travel insurance is worth having for the repatriation cover rather than the treatment. State hospitals are free at the point of use with an EHIC or GHIC, but under-resourced; the private networks — Regina Maria, MedLife, Sanador — are quick, English-speaking and cheap by Western standards, and are what most visitors end up using.

Ticks in forest and long grass from April to October — check yourself after walks. Bears are genuinely present in the Carpathians around Brașov: keep food sealed, never approach one, and do not walk mountain trails at dusk. In the Danube Delta the mosquitoes from May to August are relentless and need proper repellent rather than a supermarket spray.

Orientation, not medical advice. Entry rules change and what you need depends on your own history and where you have been — check with a travel clinic or your national health service four to six weeks before you go.

Food tip

Eat one meal of ciorbă — the sour soups are the national dish in practice — and order mici with mustard at least once. The Old Town restaurants with menus in six languages are the ones to skip; the food is better and half the price around Piața Amzei and in the residential streets behind Calea Victoriei. A lunch menu of the day (meniul zilei) is around 35-45 lei.

Getting around

• Metro — five lines, clean and quick; tap a contactless bank card at the turnstile, about 7 lei a journey
• Bus, tram and trolleybus (STB) — a separate system from the metro, about 3 lei for 90 minutes on a Card Activ
• Bolt and Uber — cheap enough that most visitors never bother with the buses; a cross-town ride is a few euros
• Walking — the centre is flat and compact, though pavements and parked cars fight each other
• Airport: the train to Gara de Nord takes about 25 minutes for 6.50 lei, or express bus 100 runs to Piața Unirii around the clock for 3 lei

Internet speed

Broadband here runs at 2.4× the global median of 128 Mbps. Mobile runs at about the global median of 110 Mbps.

Source: Ookla Speedtest Global Index · measured May 2026

Must-see

Things to do

• Tour the Palace of the Parliament, the heaviest building on earth
• See the Village Museum’s real houses moved here from across the country
• Hear a concert in the Romanian Athenaeum
• Walk Calea Victoriei from Piața Victoriei to the old royal palace
• Spend an evening in the Old Town, then eat somewhere else
• Walk out to Văcărești, a drained reservoir the wildlife took back

Nearby day trips

Say a few words

Romanian

• HelloBună ziuaBOO-nuh ZEE-wa
• Hi (informal)Salutsa-LOOT
• PleaseVă rogvuh ROG
• Thank youMulțumescmool-tsoo-MESK
• Yes / NoDa / Nuda / noo
• Excuse meScuzați-măskoo-ZATS-muh
• How much is it?Cât costă?kuht KOS-tuh
• The bill, pleaseNota, vă rogNO-ta vuh ROG
• Do you speak English?Vorbiți engleză?vor-BEETS en-GLEH-zuh
• CheersNorocno-ROK
• GoodbyeLa revederela reh-veh-DEH-reh

A Romance language in a Slavic neighbourhood — with Italian or Spanish you will read the signs long before you can hear the speech. English is widely spoken by anyone under forty and in every hotel; French is more common with older people. The letters ș and ț are "sh" and "ts", and î and â are a sound English does not have, somewhere behind the vowel in "roses".

Religion

Romanian Orthodox

About four in five Romanians are Orthodox, and it is practised rather than nominal — churches are busy on ordinary weekday mornings and people cross themselves passing one from a bus. Visitors are welcome at services: stand, keep quiet, do not walk in front of the icons, and cover shoulders and knees. Easter, not Christmas, is the great feast, and the whole country slows down for it. Transylvania is the exception to all of this, with Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed churches in the same square as the Orthodox one — a legacy of Hungarian and Saxon settlement that the fortified churches still record.

Do's and don'ts

Do

• Take your shoes off when you enter someone’s home — slippers will be offered, and refusing them is the odd move
• Say bună ziua on entering a small shop, and la revedere on the way out
• Accept the țuică poured on arrival, or at least touch the glass to your lips
• Cover shoulders and knees in Orthodox churches, and stand rather than sit if the congregation is standing
• Bring an odd number of flowers if you are invited to dinner — even numbers are for graves

Don't

• Do not use "gypsy" as a synonym for Romanian. Roma are one of the country’s minorities and the conflation is the single fastest way to sour a conversation
• Do not open with Dracula and expect delight — Vlad Țepeș is a national figure here and the vampire is a Victorian novelist’s invention
• Do not photograph during an Orthodox service, or icons where a sign asks you not to
• Do not haggle in shops; markets are the only place where it is normal, and even there gently
• Do not expect the bill to be split to the last leu in company — one person tends to pay and it evens out over a trip