Bucharest is a fascinating and complex city. We’ve read some tourist blogs that have said it’s their least favorite European city and that it’s a place to skip, but we believe that they just didn’t take the time to get under its skin. The history is fascinating, the culture is rich and the prices are great. In our mind, for that, we can put up with a little scruffiness around the edges.

What we loved about Bucharest

History

Bucharest’s history is in your face. The city still is recovering from Communism and its marks are everywhere. But beneath that one see the splendor that was once Bucharest in her heyday, before the World Wars. Once known as “little Paris”, she impresses as a grand dame who needs to fix her makeup, do her hair and adjust her clothing to show her past glory. Go another layer deeper and you see the remnants of reigns of the Ottomans, Hungarians, Germans, Austrians and Russians. It’s a melting pot of culture, food and architecture that you won’t find anywhere else in the world. We found it fascinating.

Prices

Bucharest is cheap. Very cheap. Restaurants, even famous tourist restaurants, have 4 course businessman lunches for 25 Lei, which, while we were there, was under $6. Groceries ran me about $30 a week total, wine with every dinner included. Museums were less than $2, and you could get the best seat in the house for the ballet for $21. Maybe the best deal was cell service. It cost us $7 a month for unlimited service. This is a city that is very light on your wallet.

Fountains

We lived right on Piata Unireii, which at one time was the main market square for Bucharest. Now, it’s a huge series of fountains with over 3,000 jets, spanning over a kilometer. Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night from April through October, there is a 45 minute light and sound show at the fountains. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Absolutely not to be missed!

Music

Bucharest is a city of culture, especially classical music, opera and ballet. Every odd-numbered year there is a world class classical music festival during the month of September honoring Romania’s favorite composer, George Enescu. Bucharest has a quality symphony orchestra, ballet and opera, along with many other musical performances. Best of all, they are extremely inexpensive. It’s possible to get opera tickets for less than $4 for the upper seats! If you like classical music, you can have your fill of quality performances for pennies.

Handcrafts

Romanian people are artisans. You’ll find stunning table linens, breathtaking embroidered blouses, beautiful pottery, hand woven items and their famous handpainted eggs. All of them will be for give-away prices (especially if you stay out of the tourist areas.) If handcrafts are your thing, make sure you arrive with room in your suitcase.

Few American tourists

We rarely found other Americans here. The good thing about that was that when we could start up a conversation with a Romanian, they were generally very interested in talking with us. While Romanian people have a reputation for being unfriendly, we found that once you got through to having an actual conversation, they were on the whole quite warm. Kind of like New Yorkers – the facade is rough, the reality is much nicer.

Mass Transit

Bucharest has a good mass transit system. Their metros are cheap, fast and usually reliable and their buses go all over town. They also have a trolley and tram system. You won’t have any trouble getting around the city, as long as you avoid rush hours.

What we didn’t love about Bucharest

General Appearance

No getting around it, Bucharest is a scruffy city. There’s lots of graffiti, broken sidewalks and thousands of abandoned buildings, due to earthquake damage and questions about ownership rights. While you can often see beautiful architecture under the crumbling facades, you’ll see lots of crumbling facades. There are even huge buildings from the Communist era left to ruin. Even in the nicer areas of town, you’ll pass places that look downright dystopian.

No Real Core to the City

I love a good market square, a city heart where the people gather for festivals, markets and just to feed the pigeons. Bucharest used to have that years ago at Piata Unireii, but when the city was rebuilt by Ceausesc, the area was razed for Communist area buildings and later, the fountains were built there. While the fountains are beautiful, the city now lacks a heart. Things are spread out over a larger than usual area for a European city. The best that they can do is “Old Town” which isn’t really all that old, and is a warren of pedestrian alleyways with lots of restaurants and souvenir shops. Still quite fun, but not a market square.

Traffic

I think the main pastime of Bucharest is complaining about the traffic – but it’s legitimate. The city is seriously overcrowded. While it’s not so much a factor for nesters without a car, anytime we did venture into an automobile, we remembered the complaints. While we were here, the mayor stated that Bucharest was built for a million people, but now has over four million. And I think every one of them has a car.

Infrastructure

Simply put, sometimes things just don’t work. You just have to deal. Things seem to break down more than usual, websites and information often aren’t updated, and even utilities in the apartment occasionally turned off for a while. When we comment on it, people have shrugged and said, “Well, it’s Romania.”

No real “daytrips” from Bucharest

While you’re in Romania, you really should travel outside of Bucharest. Transylvania in particular is stunning and very different from the city. However, most places are just too far to go for a day trip from the city. You’ll have to plan overnights, or probably even longer. We like being able to hop on a train for the day, but there wasn’t much to see in the general area around Bucharest.