I will be in Bucharest for just two days in Feb 08 and would like to visit a small town or two very close to Bucharest, rural and pretty towns so I can see a bit of the real Romania. Does anyone know of any towns that fit? THANKS

The closest to Bucharest that would be worth visiting is Sinaia. It is a resort town, so the rural aspect might not be there, but I would not recommend any other ones in between Bucharest and Sinaia.

There aren't any. As MilenaM says, Sinaia is OK, but absolutely not some tourist fantasy of "real Romania".

Actually, the small towns near Bucharest - places like Ploiesti and Pitesti - are the "real Romania". Hideous, jerry-built, polluted agglomerations of flats round a rust-belt industry. They're the world the majority of Romanians live in.

If you'd like theme park Romania, either go to the outdoor museum in Bucharest or give yourself a great deal longer (transport within Romania is dreadful) to travel in the far north. If the weather will let you.

For my summer 2006 trip to Romania, I posted a report about spending a few days in Bucharest and surroundings.

The report is here (In Search for the Little Paris):

http://fodors.com/forums/threadselec...p;tid=34859356

Maybe you get some ideas of what to do.

Unfortunalty the local villages were formed into collectives and peasants housed in filthy tower blocks so the rural beauty you look for in Bucharesti is not there.

Go North until you reach the plateau after the oil pumping nodding donkeys. Climb the plateau and you will have a bit more choice

Oldbuckhorn - On second thought, why don't you spend the 2 days in Bucharest? In Feb. I would not want to be stuck in a train station somewhere or travel in unheated trains. Romania has had a lot of snow this winter and more is coming.

Bilboburgler - what is the plateau you are talking about? and what choice would that give?

The movement into collective villages was more effective in the areas close to the capital. The plateau also called Transylvania is populated by a a different language and racial mix in this case their are more people of Hungarian stock and, until the wall came down, Germna stock. This has caused a very different village style. Each village is made up of four house types (German, Hungarian, Roumanian and Roma) the majority of the German population (arrived 1350!)left when they were let out (for money) in about 1980 and all that are left are the old and infirm. The hungarians have generally moved into the German houses. Logically the Roumanians have moved into he Hungarian houses and the Roma have... you get the picture. The villages are worth visiting merely to see how each group live (from horse focus to mud pie).

Where the villages become towns they retreat to more the normal squalid result of the last dictator but even here there are some gems.

I think bilboburgler means the Transylvanian Plateau, between the mountains. The oil fields are before and upto around Ploiesti. You then get to Busteni, Sinaia, Predeal and Brasov, and beyond this part of the mountains it's the plateau.

By the way, you could also take a day trip to Busteni, the nearest mountainous town worthy of a stop, with spectacular views in winter. Maybe you will take the cable car up the mountain to see the natural monuments there.

I was there last summer and I enjoyed the views and the nature. However, you have to leave Bucharest early morning, which might not be that convenient when you have only two days. The connections to Busteni are neither that fast nor too frequent, a train every few hours.