Romania and Hungarian random thoughts
Most everyone seems to speak English. The ones that don't are either old (probably taught Russian in school) or badly educated as I've been told that English is taught in school. Considering that everyone uses the English language when traveling that makes the country a lot more mobile.
Everything is growing. While the traffic is out of control on a lot of narrow 'old world' streets, there are jobs a plenty. They are needing to bring in immigrants to do more programming work and such. Good economy!
Prices aren't too high here - higher than Ukraine certainly but not terrible. I'll work on getting some prices later for comparison though if they are going through a great upturn in the economy I suspect the prices will soon be climbing.
Budapest tips and tricks
Bring a bunch of small change and bills to a metro station that sells tickets. Buy a bunch (you can get a book of 10 for about $10) of 'use this on one ride' type tickets. Some machines only accept credit cards, some only accept bills, some only accept change. I don't want to give a random machine my credit card - I stick with cash from an ATM located INSIDE of a bank so it has less chance of being tampered with at all times (in all countries).
The reason you want to get a bunch of these one use tickets is a 'just in case' thing. Not all stations have ticket machines and in crappy weather it can be a long assed walk to one that does. Be sure to keep them in pristine shape because you need to put them into a stamping slot on the bus. Stamping slot is on a pole a bit higher than waist height - look for it. Insert it on the tick tack toe part with that face up. You'll see it on the ticket.
Sadly, you can't buy a day pass and use it whenever you want by stamping it on the bus. Day passes are only for the day you purchase it. It's not a high price (around $5?) and it's always safest for foreigners to have one to get around byzantine rules of train travel. This country doesn't seem to be as slick as say Germany in their travel stuff, but they do have a lot of it in Budapest.
COSTS
(ROM to EUR or USD, divide by 4 or 5)
Delivery food (kicks the shit out of the delivery food in England) about $10-15 USD worth for a LOT of food.
Stopped by various people selling wine (and wine prior to fermenting) at their own private vinyards.
Average price (without haggling) is about $1.60 per liter.
Sorin: "You should have haggled."
Logan: "I am not use to being able to get a liter of anything - much less wine - and pretty decent wine - for anything approaching this price."
Even the 'two buck chuck' at some fancy store I can't remember the name of in the states is now $3.00 for 75 cl. (That's .75 of a liter). And this stuff is better than what I had there. Hand crafted, even.
(Disclaimer: While this is not the 'best wine in the world' it certainly 'does the trick'. And by that I mean 'it will get you really drunk'.)
The other prices on wine - from a store in the standard bottles of 75cl is usually 25 ROM (about $5.80) with the 'expensive' wines at about 100 ROM (about $23).
HUNGARIAN COSTS
Shave and a haircut, $10 or $11.
Most everyone seems to speak English. The ones that don't are either old (probably taught Russian in school) or badly educated as I've been told that English is taught in school. Considering that everyone uses the English language when traveling that makes the country a lot more mobile.
Everything is growing. While the traffic is out of control on a lot of narrow 'old world' streets, there are jobs a plenty. They are needing to bring in immigrants to do more programming work and such. Good economy!
Prices aren't too high here - higher than Ukraine certainly but not terrible. I'll work on getting some prices later for comparison though if they are going through a great upturn in the economy I suspect the prices will soon be climbing.
Budapest tips and tricks
Bring a bunch of small change and bills to a metro station that sells tickets. Buy a bunch (you can get a book of 10 for about $10) of 'use this on one ride' type tickets. Some machines only accept credit cards, some only accept bills, some only accept change. I don't want to give a random machine my credit card - I stick with cash from an ATM located INSIDE of a bank so it has less chance of being tampered with at all times (in all countries).
The reason you want to get a bunch of these one use tickets is a 'just in case' thing. Not all stations have ticket machines and in crappy weather it can be a long assed walk to one that does. Be sure to keep them in pristine shape because you need to put them into a stamping slot on the bus. Stamping slot is on a pole a bit higher than waist height - look for it. Insert it on the tick tack toe part with that face up. You'll see it on the ticket.
Sadly, you can't buy a day pass and use it whenever you want by stamping it on the bus. Day passes are only for the day you purchase it. It's not a high price (around $5?) and it's always safest for foreigners to have one to get around byzantine rules of train travel. This country doesn't seem to be as slick as say Germany in their travel stuff, but they do have a lot of it in Budapest.
COSTS
(ROM to EUR or USD, divide by 4 or 5)
Delivery food (kicks the shit out of the delivery food in England) about $10-15 USD worth for a LOT of food.
Stopped by various people selling wine (and wine prior to fermenting) at their own private vinyards.
Average price (without haggling) is about $1.60 per liter.
Sorin: "You should have haggled."
Logan: "I am not use to being able to get a liter of anything - much less wine - and pretty decent wine - for anything approaching this price."
Even the 'two buck chuck' at some fancy store I can't remember the name of in the states is now $3.00 for 75 cl. (That's .75 of a liter). And this stuff is better than what I had there. Hand crafted, even.
(Disclaimer: While this is not the 'best wine in the world' it certainly 'does the trick'. And by that I mean 'it will get you really drunk'.)
The other prices on wine - from a store in the standard bottles of 75cl is usually 25 ROM (about $5.80) with the 'expensive' wines at about 100 ROM (about $23).
HUNGARIAN COSTS
Shave and a haircut, $10 or $11.
