Bucharest Warnings or Dangers

Prior to any trip that I make, I have a flick through the “Warnings and Dangers” tips here on VT and on various other websites just to see what sort of things I should be aware of. I did this before my trip to Bucharest, and it’s fair to say that there were quite a few warnings being made.

As always, I committed the warnings to memory (it’s better to be safe than sorry!), but didn’t really worry too much about any of them.

Here is a summary of the various warnings and dangers that I read about, and my own experiences of those dangers:

Stray Dogs

This was the warning that scared me the most. I’ve never been a big fan of dogs, and the reports of packs of wild dogs roaming the streets of Bucharest caused me some concern. Furthermore, I had read reports of a Japanese businessman bleeding to death after being bitten by a dog in the city and had seen some statistics that suggested that dozens of Bucharest residents are hospitalised each day as a result of dog bites.

The reality was nothing like I imagined it to be. Most of the dogs that we saw (and we saw only a tiny fraction of the number that I expected to see) were rather tired looking dogs, sleeping in the shade of a tree in the park or scavenging for scraps of food on the city centre streets.

Only on one occasion did I feel even remotely threatened. While walking down a dimly lit side street late at night, we could see a group of 4 or 5 dogs. One of them, quite menacing looking, walked towards us from across the street, but turned back half way and didn’t bother us at all.

Overall, my fears were generally unfounded, but I would still recommend avoiding quiet, dimly lit areas of the city centre after dark.

Fake Police

Whilst waiting for our luggage at Otopeni Airport, a Romanian girl who had been on our flight warned us of the danger of fake police in Bucharest. She believed it was a real possibility that such fraudsters would approach us in the street and demand to see our passports. She warned us not to, in any circumstances, hand over our passports to strangers in the street, and told us that genuine police would never ask to see our passports in this way.

Of course, we had no intention of doing so.

We were never approached by any fake police while in Bucharest and, in fact, never approached by any locals looking to rip us off in any way.

Be on your guard just like in any other city, but don’t worry unduly.

Taxi Drivers

I have written rather detailed tips in the transportation section of my Bucharest page detailing a few things to be aware of with taxis.

To summarise the main details here:

- some taxi drivers that pick up at the airport will attempt to charge a high fare and will refuse to give you a receipt if you haggle the fare down. My understanding of this is that they believe business travellers will pay the higher fare in order to get a receipt, thereby allowing them to reclaim the expenses from their employers. As we didn’t require a receipt, we haggled with the driver when he attempted to overcharge us and a paid a fare that we thought was more realistic. The driver refused to give us a receipt. We didn’t care.

- all of the yellow taxis in Bucharest display the fare per km on the door of the vehicle. You should have no problem finding a taxi that charges between 1.40 and 1.70 Lei per km. Note that all of the taxis look very similar, but some of them will charge over 7.50 Lei per km – which is quite a significant price difference on a long journey! Be sure to check the fares on the door before getting into a taxi.

- on several occasions we found that taxi drivers didn’t know the place that we were looking for, despite it being fairly close to the city centre and despite, on one occasion, us having a full address for the restaurant we wanted to visit. However, the drivers were always friendly and went out of their way (by phoning friends/colleagues) to ensure that we got to our intended destination.

Beggars

I find that most major cities attract beggars in one form or another. It was no surprise to find beggars on the streets of Bucharest – after all, it is a city of over 2 million people in a relatively poor area of eastern Europe.

However, the problem was not nearly as bad as I thought it might be. We saw the occasional amputee sitting on the sidewalk outside restaurants and shops with a begging bowl, and on one or two occasions we were approached and asked for money, but I have experienced far worse begging even in western European cities.

There is undoubted poverty in the Romanian capital, and we often saw people rummaging through bins in search of food scraps, but we were never seriously harassed. Unlike in Budapest and Toronto, to name but two cities, we didn’t see homeless people sleeping rough in the subways – but I’m sure that this must occur.

Traffic

From a pedestrian’s point of view, walking around Bucharest wasn’t too much of an ordeal. I could name dozens of cities where crossing the road was much more dangerous than it was in Bucharest. There are lots of underpasses and pedestrian crossings in the city centre.

However, I would think twice before driving in Bucharest. Quite a lot of vehicles are in a relatively poor state of disrepair, and road rules aren’t always followed, especially when turning from one road onto another across a lane of traffic. We endured a couple of near misses during our various taxi rides in the city and we saw a van hit a motorcycle on the road outside our hotel.

Unwelcoming Locals

I would like to start by making it clear that all the locals that we met in Bucharest were friendly and welcoming. However, I feel that I should share this anecdote in the hope that it might prove useful to somebody else:

One morning we asked the man on reception at our hotel if he could recommend any day trips from Bucharest. We were interested in visiting somewhere off the beaten tourist path, where we could perhaps see a more traditional way of life. He mentioned the name of a village or small town close by, that we may be able to visit by bus or train (he wasn’t sure), and where we could see traditional Romanian houses and experience local customs and ways of life. However, he then added, and I quote: “the only problem is that they might see you, think you are something, and beat you up”. I’m not sure what he meant by that, and I didn’t want to find out, so we gave it a miss. I was surprised – that warning was so far removed from the hospitality that we experienced from the locals in Bucharest.

We then asked him about the best way to visit that evening’s football match between Steaua Bucharest and UT Arad. Having not scared us enough, he told us not to bother going because there was likely to be trouble in the crowd and, as foreigners, we could be likely targets. He did recommend that we visited an Irish bar and watched the match on TV “with our own people”. Given that a match the previous midweek between two Bucharest clubs had been abandoned due to crowd trouble, we decided it was best to give it a miss.

Summary

We found Bucharest to be a safe and friendly city on the whole. We never felt threatened or unsafe at any time of day or night, we didn’t experience any real hassle from touts, beggars or scammers and we barely even noticed the stray dogs.

Just take the usual precautions.

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