Romania: Bucharest and Brasov
 

I need help with Romania. I am leaving for Brasov in a few days. Planned to stay in Brasov for 4 night and Bucharest for 3. Flying from AMS to OTP and taking the bus or shuttle to Brasov and then train to Bucharest. If you can help, please, below are my questions.

1. I am thinking about renting a car in Brasov for a couple of days. My understanding is that I need a the international driver's license. Alternative is hire a driver. Does anyone have recommendation for a driver? How expensive is it to hire a driver? Other alternatives to visit the castle and surroundings?
2. Is there a better alternative than taking the shuttle from OTP to Brasov?

Can't provide specifics, but interested to hear your final routing as I'll be doing this in September or October.

I'll have these same questions. When budgeting, I'll use booking dot com to get a decent cost estimate for rental cars. For transport options between cities, I'll use rome2rio dot com.

For the international driver's license, is that just Romania you have heard that for? Or all of Europe?
We got one back in 2003 when we went, never needed to show it. Since then, we have rented cars multiple times in Europe (not Romania) and never had an issue with presenting just a US license, even in Germany.
To be safe, I would pose the question to the rental car agency you use. We used Sixt and Eurocar as well as Hertz.
BTW, the one thing I would check is insurance. Requirements seem to vary widely from country to country.

Normally in Europe International Drivers License is not needed. In Sicily the rental car agency did ask for it. US State Department mentioned the requirement as well as the guidebooks. I planned to get the license. Will report back.

I've been asked to show IDL in several countries when renting a car. In Austria once, the agent refused to rent a cat to another customer who did not have one. In Romania and Bulgaria specifically, I did not need it for rental. Easy and cheap to get and lasts for a year, so best to have one with you. Driving in Romania: be prepared for slow traffic, especially when passing through towns. Not many true highways.

How safe is the areas under the current international climate?

There doesn't seem to be a lot of up to date information about traveling in Romania. I have just returned from 4 days in Brasov and 3 days in Romania. I thought I will update this thread. Maybe someone will benefit on a later date.

Safety. I did not experience any situations that might be considered as unsafe. The country is welcoming and easy to move around. I did not have any issues driving in Transylvania. Yes, it can be slow. A 50 KM drive can take as long as 1 hour on a good day, 2 hours if there are constructions. However, in general Romanians are careful drivers. We used Uber in Bucharest. We did not have any issues except some drivers do not come to the meet up place. We had to walk around the corner to meet them.

Hiring a driver does not appear to be the thing to do. We stay at the Radisson Blu in Brasov and Hilton Garden Inn old town in Bucharest. No one in either hotel ever heard of hiring drivers for a couple of days. They were very confused by my question.

In Brasov and in Bucharest, business hours are not always posted and around holidays (we were there during Easter) all bets are off. Some of the best museums were closed for a 4 day for the Easter weekend but that information is not posted anywhere. The websites seldom have opening hours. The ones that do can be out of date or inaccurate.

While, there is an airport near Brasov, I had to fly into Bucharest. Transportation between Bucharest Airport (OTP) and Brasov is chaotic. We opted not to reserve seats for the "bus" which turned out to be the right thing to do for us. Our flight was delayed and we were required to check our roll on bags. There were signs inside arrival hall for Autobus to Brasov. There were no directions outside the building. The online blogs mentioned the buses depart from an area between the Departure and the Arrival buildings. It would be more correctly to say that the buses depart from behind the parking garage in front of the arrival building. That might have been a recent change. In Romania things are fluid. It's a quick 3 minute walk from Arrival; finding it took 15 minutes.

Once we found our way to a group of dozen or so people and found the guy in charge of the Brasov buses (he was one of 2 or 3 with a clipboard and colored vest), we were told to wait "over there", The bus turned out to be a 21 seat minibus with insufficient space for bags. There were 18 people going to Brasov. We paid cash for the ride. All of us fit into the bus with the overflow bags rolling inside the bus for a 3 hour ride. The Aro Palace Hotel is the stop for the Old Town.

Romania is safer than any state or city in the US is. It's also safer than anywhere in Western or Southern Europe. The only potential hazard are the roads, as infrastructure is poor and some drivers are maniacs, resulting in the highest road accident rate in the entire EU. Plus bears can be a danger in some parts of the Carpathians if you plan to go hiking.

Buses from OTP are chaotic, yes. They do depart either from behind the parking garage at arrivals, or towards the right when you walk outside no the ground floor towards the departures terminal. It depends on the company/destination.. Although taking a bus from OTP to Brasov is faster than taking the train (which involves a change of trains at Bucharest Gara de Nord), I would actually recommend the latter to foreign visitors, as it's so much easier and more comfortable.

It is a wonderful and welcoming country. I highly recommend a visit. We had a thoroughly wonderful time even with museums and businesses closed for 4 days for Easter.

You are referring to an International Driving Permit, which is not a license. Rather, it acts as a translator for your actual license. Obtaining one will cost you $20.00; will last a year; is valid in most countries; and only takes minutes to acquire. You will also need a passport-sized photograph of yourself.

You are required to have an International Driving Permit when driving in Romania. I found this surprising; but when I drove from Serbia to Romania, agents of the border patrol not only requested that they see my International Driving Permit — which I thankfully had — but also told me about three other motorists that they turned away from the border that day because they did not have an International Driving Permit.

The biggest problem you might have with driving in Romania is finding free parking, which is not impossible to do. Otherwise, I would recommend driving in Romania.

Canarsie, you are correct. I am referring to the $20 International Driving Permit. I rented from Avis in Brasov. They actually sent me an email reminded me to get it. They will not rent a car to me without it. Public parking in Brasov is not expensive. The most I paid was 24 Lei for 24 hours. There are plenty of spaces. At the tourist sites, public parking is very limited. The private parking are more expensive.

Driving in Romania is a lot easier than driving in places like Italy for Ireland. Just remember to allow a lot of time and avoid driving in the cities. Uber worked very well in Bucharest and not expensive.

We did a big road trip in Romania in Spring 2023 and another one over Easter 2025. It's a great country with very friendly people and tasty food. I found driving there much more pleasant than in say Italy. You occasionally have some fancy German cars passing you at 150-180kph even on wide 2-lane roads (where the limit is 100), but the driving generally isn't aggressive, and we didn't see any highly dangerous maneuvres like passing in a blind turn. My two laments were traffic jams and poorly marked speed limits. Traffic jams might have been due to Easter, but it was insane. We spent almost four hours traveling OTP to Sinaia (should take less than 2 hours) -- 15-30 minutes at every roundabout on the Ploiesti bypass, half an hour outside Comarnic, etc -- apparently it continues that way through Brasov. On a peak day, I'd definitely take the train instead of going anywhere RN1. As for speed limits, most of the time I had no idea how fast I was allowed to go -- you drive for miles through a "village" where you're supposed to go 50 or 70, but the only indication is a sign with the name of the city/town posted at the city limits. Didn't see a lot of enforcement efforts, and no tickets in the mail thus far.

I really enjoy reading all of these accounts as I try to plan my trips this summer.