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The highway of ... tomorrow in Romania. Neverending story

or lack of. Because the term highway is a SciFi term in Romania’s authorities dictionary or fact books.

Most of the Western Civilisations prefer to build up highways for speeding up the expedition of goods from one place to another, but also to cut the traveling time by personal car between cities. In Romania, 20 years after the fall of the pro-soviet regim we have around 200km of highway, all starting from Bucharest  and ending up on the leisure points for the capital of Romania citizens: Constanta – at the black sea, or Brasov (mostly still underconstruction after 7 years) and the rest of the winter ski resorts in Carpathians Mountains.

While most of the border countries – like Bulgaria, Serbia or Hungary – prefer to build up between 70-200km of highway / year we still struggle with our 22 million people to get the country highway kilometers to 200. In total. As road infrastructure of Romania, it’s a known fact that the EU countries started building the better roads towards West; Austria did the best job on getting closer to Swizerland, Hungary to Germany, Czech Republic and Austria and even Bulgary did a great job in building highways and national roads towards West – Serbia.

The government of Romania doesn’t give a penny on others did right or wrong. They have their own way: the corruption way! This is why the most important city in the civilized Romania, Timisoara is not having right now an road to get the traffic that comes from Arad to Lugoj (North-West) out of the city and this is why it takes about 10-11 hours to get from Timisoara to Bucharest, which is 550km away; Budapest (200 km ~ 2.2 hrs drive), Belgrade (120 km ~ 1.5 hrs drive) and Wien (900km ~ 6 hrs drive) are cities that you can get easier and faster from Timisoara if you travel by car.

Basically, the structure of the roads in Romania is on ground zero, with only 200 km (most of them still underconstruction, on repair or with speed limitation) for a country that has 300.000 square km and 22.000.000 people living in it. And it’s a member of EU since 01.07.

If you think you can come to Romania and use the car (perhaps your car?) to move from one place to another, think again. Or get an helicopter rented. Or just skip coming, you’ll get your nerves drained on the road.

If you want to build up a highway here, this is the place to do it: the price that you can ask for the roads are 300-1.500% higher than you would ask in Croatia (think about the mountains, tunnels, bridges that you will have to build in Croatia) or EU. We have a range between 5 and 60 milion euros / km of build highway in the plain, while in a mountain country (Croatia, Slovenia) you would have to build each km with only 3.5 millions euro.

Btw, the introduction sequence of Borat movie is filmed in Romania. Do you remember that wonderful blue car? that’s the national Dacia vehicle – still in use on the country roads, build and used in Romania by people who doesn’t have the money to upgrade to Renault’s Logan version.

… but, the flipside of the story is that in Romania you’ll find the newest Mercedes, Lamborghini or Ferrari cars before they hit the autostores in rest of the world. And that’s another story

social bucharest, highway, roads, Romania, status of romania transportation, timisoara

Although I’m born and raised in Romania, I’m almost sick and tired of watching and witnessing the things populared called “romanisme”. I made a list of 10 reasons that should keep you out of investing in my country, maybe in the near future the reasons beyond this article will change, but here’s the situation now.

1. Although the medium salary is around 1.000 RON (~300 EUR), if you will place an hiring ad on the market for a job that requires a lower salary than the medium one, you will hardly find youth people(18-25 yrs old) that will comply with your requirements and will be able to function within the job’s parameters. You will get CV’s and salary proposals from ppl without any experience asking you for 2-3 times the medium salary, although they don’t even know how to deal with the job requirements. If it’s an international job, you better go an hire Chinese, Africans or even Arabs, they will do the job more properly.

2. Be prepared to pay more than in European countries like Italy, France, Spain, UK for almost everything; even the legendary burger for Hard Rock Cafe costs in Romania 15$ compared with NYC 9-12$ price; be sure than you will pay more for everything, starting for the basic bread till the meat and every vegetable that you want to eat.

3. Remember, you have to stay in a store less than 10 minutes if you don’t want  to buy something. If you stay more, the sale person will regard you with suspicion, going on the idea that you probably are a theft.

4. Don’t apply the American way here! You can’t make it your own way; you will be at the mercy of authorities, state or other persons that have higher ranks than you. Corruption is still a growing business and probably, if you decide to invest in Romania, you will have to pay for things that comes without any problem in democratic countries.

5. Prepare to be treated like dirt by state institutions and employees. Although most are public functionaires, they act and react as gods; they know everything that you can afford with your money and if you’re not willing to pay, than you will have to wait a couple of months for everything that can be solved within 5 minutes or on email. It will stay the same way until you’re exasperated, you address petitions to EU instances or courts; after that it might resolve everything.

6. Do you have a car? Well, don’t bring it here: we have the crappiest roads in Europe, and on a EU Road you will make about 9-10 hours to get from Timisoara (Western city) to Bucharest (Capital city) for about 550 km, but for the first 300km you will probably make about 7 hours if you want to travel by car; every country in Europe makes the better roads to West, we make them near East; did i mentioned that we have about 300 km of highway, but they are always under construction or on repair? and you will find them near Bucharest. Trains will take you within 8 hours for 550 km so, the medium speed should be around 70km / hour; compared with France’s TGV 350kmh …. sorry, cannot make that comparison.

7. We have beautiful and affordable girls, if you plan to have fun; but watch your pockets, credit cards and everything that has connection with money and your account. A night can cost you a lifetime savings sometimes.

8. Did you know that EU threats the E’s within the aliments, food and drinks carefully; we don’t. You can eat cancerigene food anywhere: hotels, restaurants, fast-foods (more than usual).

9. Justice is for money. Everything is right for you if you have money; if you don’t then you can die with the justice in your right hand, cause almost no court will give you a win in a case you clearly and undoubtely have the winning reason on your side. It’s not enough!

10. Everything works on relations: no public bidding will help your business if you don’t have connections to help you win; you have the chance to find and witness corruption in everything, from sports to media, and from politics to farmers and small state employees. If you’re a non-smoking person, there’s little chance to find a restaurant where you can eat without the cigarette smoke in your nose; If you’re a vegetarian, remember that there are 3-4 restaurants for you at each million ppl, so keep close to big cities: Bucharest, Timisoara, Constanta, Cluj, Brasov.

You don’t have to be sorry. just walk away; Romania is a beautiful country, but unfortunatly … the management sucks!

Update 10.2009: we have a prime-minister that is also the education ministry. His job, according to his words is NOT to take out the country out of the crysis. We have electronic engineers as agriculture minister, we have lawyers as monetary experts on Romanian National Bank, we have about 5 ministers that are in charge of 2 ministry, each of them. Corruption – we got it. Rotten politicians -we have them. Incompetent governance – say no more, we have it. Why would you put your money on a fixed  lottery called Romania?

Communication, social conditions, corruption, investments, restaurants, roads, Romania