Danube Delta

Currency

Change money in Tulcea before you get on a boat. The villages have few machines and fewer exchange houses, and while guesthouses take cards, the fisherman who takes you into the channels at dawn would rather have cash.

ATMs & cards

Draw cash in Tulcea, from a Banca Transilvania, BCR or BRD machine, and carry enough for the trip — Sulina has a couple of ATMs and the smaller villages have none. Decline conversion as everywhere else in Romania.

Sulina has a couple of machines and the smaller villages have none. Boatmen and fishermen prefer cash.

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

The safest place in this guide in terms of crime — the villages are tiny and everyone knows everyone. The real hazards are natural: mosquitoes from May to August that need serious repellent, sun with no shade on open water, and sudden squalls that make the lakes genuinely dangerous in a small boat. Go with a local who reads the weather.

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

You eat fish here or you eat badly. Borș de pește — the sour fish soup, usually served with the fish separately and with mămăligă and garlic sauce — is the dish the delta is built on, and every guesthouse makes a version. Full board at a pensiune is normal and usually the best value; buying a meal à la carte in Sulina in August is not.

Getting around

• Navrom ferries — the classic slow boats from Tulcea to Sulina, Sfântu Gheorghe and Crișan, running several days a week
• Fast passenger boats — an hour and a half to Sulina against the ferry’s four, and roughly twice the price
• Hired boats and guides — the only way into the small channels, and the whole point of coming; arrange through your guesthouse
• Bicycles — useful on Sulina’s single road and the dyke paths, useless elsewhere
• Getting here: Tulcea is 4.5 hours from Bucharest by road, and the delta itself has no through roads at all

Internet speed

Broadband here runs at 2.2× the global median of 128 Mbps. Mobile runs at 76% of the global median of 110 Mbps.

Source: Ookla Speedtest Global Index · measured May 2026

Must-see

Things to do

• Go out at dawn with a fisherman into the small channels
• Watch pelicans fish on Lake Fortuna or Roșca-Buhaiova
• Walk the sand-and-oak forest at Letea
• Take the slow ferry the length of the Sulina arm
• Swim off the beach at Sfântu Gheorghe
• Eat borș de pește where it was caught an hour earlier

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