Cheap European countries to visit: Romania

As much as I have traveled that world I have tended to stay away from Europe as a whole simply because just like my home country of USA, it is comparatively very expensive. Unbeknownst to most North Americans, the world really isn't an expensive place to visit or even live if you are willing to take the plunge into the unknown.

Romania is one of those places and it might surprise you how cheap it actually is there.

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It was quite some time ago that I was actually visiting Romania so I would imagine that some of my memories of how much things cost will have changed by then but it's not like the country would get completely overhauled in the few years that it has been since I last went in.

The thing about Romania is the vast and very old culture but another great aspect of it is the nature and there is plenty of it. Excursions, especially if you can manage to secure your own transport to it outside of a guided tour are very cheap - the guides on a clearly labeled mountain trail system is totally unnecessary. When i was there entrance to amazing national parks that you could easily spend an entire day in were only around $2-3 for entrance. I have heard that if you are a student, a student of any kind with some sort of ID that this cost is halved. I suppose I could have gotten a student ID card in town somewhere but this entrance fee is so little that I would kind of feel bad scamming the system.

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Waterfalls, trails, flora and fauna of all kinds can be found in the extensive but not expensive national parks that are all over the country.

The most expensive thing that you are going to encounter when traveling in Romania is accommodation and even this is not very expensive and is all relative depending on the individual. Hostels are all over the place and you (or at least could) get a perfectly comfortable bed in one of them for around $10 a night. For all the people hoping for Central America or South East Asia cheap being the case with the hostels in Romania, I'm sorry I don't think it exists. I looked and finding anything under $15 is pretty difficult.

Food, even western food like pizza costs next to nothing and it was very easy for me to eat all 3 meals and a snack or two throughout the day for less than $5. Obviously this can go up dramatically if you want to eat at fancy places but a true backpacker tries to keep this cost down as much as possible right?

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There are 2 things that really impressed me about Romania and that was how clean most of it was and how inexpensive travel to and from anywhere was. Trains, if they exist between cities are normally under $10 on a perfectly comfortable and safe train. Inner city metro trains are less than $1 and are much cleaner than any of the subways we have back in my home country. Seriously USA, clean that shit up - our metros are a disgrace.

Now I want to make something very clear though: This is a great place to visit in the short term while staying in hostels and quickly making your way around to the sites. For reasons that I do not know, finding inexpensive long-term accommodation such as a studio or one-bedroom apartment are quite expensive by backpacking standards. While I never intended to stay in any part of the country for this long you will really struggle to find a place to stay for less than $400 a month. This might still sound cheap to a lot of people, but for the truly budget-conscious traveler, this is probably a bit much. Also, this is at the seriously low end and you also need to keep in mind that there cold also be some level of taking advantage of foreigners involved in this process as well. I can't say for sure because I didn't really investigate it very thoroughly.

It is a fantastic place to visit though and since transportation is some of the cheapest in Europe, there is no reason to not visit it well, unless it is the dead of winter :)