Five Days Across Transylvania by Train: Cluj to Bucharest Without a Car

By the third week of July, Southern Europe has priced itself out of a cheap week away. Seville and Athens are pushing 40°C, the Adriatic is booked solid, and every coastal town between Lisbon and Split has doubled its rates for the school holidays. Transylvania has a different July. The valleys get hot, but the towns sit high enough to cool down after dark, the mountains behind them stay green all summer, and it is still one of the cheapest corners of the EU to spend five days.

This is a one-way route with no backtracking: fly into Cluj-Napoca, work south by train through Sighișoara and Brașov, fly home from Bucharest. No rental car, no checked bag, four nights of beds.

Why this route works right now

• Altitude does the air conditioning. Brașov sits at around 600 m with the Postăvarul massif directly behind it, and Poiana Brașov — a short bus ride further up — is above 1,000 m. Afternoons are warm; evenings genuinely cool off.
• Romania is in the EU but not the eurozone. You pay in lei, at roughly 5 lei to €1, and the prices reflect that: a good plate of food in Brașov costs what a coffee and a pastry cost in Porto.
• Schengen is done. Romania's air and sea borders joined in March 2024 and land borders on 1 January 2025, so arriving from another Schengen country means no passport queue on either end.
• The crowds are domestic, not international. Sighișoara and Bran get busy in the middle of the day; almost everywhere else you are ahead of the coach tours by 9am.

Booking it: two one-ways, three airports

Don't book a return. Book two separate one-way tickets — into Cluj-Napoca (CLJ) and out of Bucharest — which on low-cost airlines is usually the same price or cheaper than a return, and saves you a wasted day going back the way you came. Cluj is a serious low-cost base with wide Western European coverage, and Bucharest is served from almost everywhere in Europe.

Two things to check before you pay. Bucharest has two commercial airports, so read which one your ticket actually says and plan the transfer from that one. And Brașov's own airport at Ghimbav opened in 2022 with a thin route network — if something happens to fly there from your city, you can shorten this itinerary by a travel day.

Rough costs per person, based on booking around two months out:

Day 1 — Cluj-Napoca: landing, and the hill above it

A city bus runs from the terminal into the centre for a few lei; buy the ticket before boarding at the kiosk or on the app, because inspectors do check. Drop the bag and walk to Piața Unirii, where St. Michael's Church — a big, plain, confident piece of 14th–15th century Gothic — takes up most of the square.

Cluj is a university city of well over 300,000 people, which means that in late July it is oddly relaxed: the students are gone, the terraces are half empty, and you get the old town at a walking pace. Spend the afternoon on Strada Potaissa and around the Museum Square, then climb Cetățuia hill in the last hour of light. It is fifteen sweaty minutes up and the whole city lies underneath you, church towers and tower blocks together.

One date to check: the huge electronic music festival that takes over Cluj in early August moves every bed in the city into a different price bracket. If your dates brush against it, book accommodation the day you book flights.

Day 2 — 120 metres under Turda

The single best thing to do in a Romanian heatwave is go underground. Salina Turda, a former salt mine about 30 km from Cluj, sits at a constant 11–12°C year-round, and has been fitted out with a Ferris wheel, a boating lake and a mini-golf course inside chambers the size of cathedrals. It is strange and genuinely spectacular. The mine's history runs back to the middle ages; the amusement park is a very recent addition.

Minibuses run to Turda from the city's bus stations through the day, take around 45 minutes and cost a few euros. Entry is in the region of 50 lei — check the current price, as it has risen steadily. Bring a warm layer: 12°C after a 33°C morning feels arctic.

If you still have legs in the afternoon, Cheile Turzii — a limestone gorge with a marked trail and a wooden walkway system — is a couple of hours of walking nearby and a fair alternative to a second city day.

Day 3 — The slow train to Sighișoara

Take a morning train south. Cluj to Sighișoara is roughly four hours on an InterRegio service, second class is perfectly comfortable, and the fare is usually somewhere in the 40–60 lei range. Buy at the station counter the day before, or check timetables and fares in advance with CFR Călători. The line runs through the Transylvanian plateau: hay bales, hills, fortified church towers appearing above villages.

Sighișoara's citadel is a UNESCO-listed medieval town that people still live in — not a preserved shell but a hill of crooked, ochre-and-pink houses with a working post office. Climb the Clock Tower for the view over the tiled roofs, then take the covered wooden staircase (a long, dark, 175-step tunnel built so schoolchildren could get up the hill in winter) to the Church on the Hill and the German-Saxon cemetery behind it, which is quiet and beautiful and almost always empty.

Sighișoara's medieval festival traditionally lands in the last days of July. If it falls on your dates the citadel is packed and wonderful and every bed within walking distance is gone — check the dates and book accordingly, in either direction.

Day 4 — Down to Brașov

Walk the citadel walls at 8am, before the day trips arrive, then take a mid-morning train to Brașov — around two and a half hours.

Brașov is the pivot of this trip. Piața Sfatului is one of the great squares of Central Europe, ringed by pastel merchant houses with the Black Church on one corner, a huge sooty Gothic building that holds a well-known collection of Anatolian carpets. Strada Sforii, a couple of streets away, is barely over a metre wide and takes four minutes to walk and photograph.

Then go up Tâmpa, the forested crag that sits directly behind the square. There is a cable car, and there is a zig-zag path that takes about an hour on foot in the shade. From the top the whole medieval street plan is laid out below you and the Carpathians open up behind. Do it in the early evening, when the rock has stopped radiating heat.

Day 5 — Bran or the mountain, then the run to Bucharest

Buses to Bran leave from Brașov's Autogara 2 roughly every half hour and take about 40 minutes. Bran Castle is a handsome fortress with a very tenuous connection to Vlad Țepeș and an even more tenuous one to Bram Stoker's novel, and by 11am it is a queue. Râșnov fortress, on the same road, is quieter, cheaper and has better views. If castles are not the point of your trip, take the bus up to Poiana Brașov instead and walk a marked trail above 1,000 m for the morning.

Back in Brașov for a mid-afternoon train to Bucharest: around two and a half to three hours through the Prahova Valley, the prettiest stretch of railway in the country. It stops at Sinaia, where Peleș Castle sits fifteen minutes uphill from the platform — a plausible break of journey if you start early enough, though it closes at least one day a week, so check before building a day around it.

Bucharest's Gara de Nord has a rail link to the main airport taking well under an hour, which removes the last taxi negotiation of the trip. If you have an evening flight, the old town is a fifteen-minute walk from the station and worth the hour.

Packing for two climates in one bag

This route swings from 35°C in Bucharest to a 12°C salt mine to a cool ridge at 1,000 m, and you will be carrying everything up a lot of stairs.

• One warm mid-layer covers the mine, the mountain and the late evening in Brașov. You will use it every day.
• Trail-capable shoes, not sandals. Tâmpa and the gorge are real paths.
• Two litres of water capacity. Tap water in the cities is treated to EU standards; refill and keep moving.
• Keep the whole thing inside a free personal item if you can — Ryanair's free small bag is 40x20x25 cm, Wizz Air's is 40x30x20 cm and easyJet's is 45x36x20 cm, so packing to the smallest of those keeps all three open to you. This is exactly the trip our compression backpack was built for, but any bag you can carry up a citadel staircase will do the job.

The practical bits

• Money: lei only. Cards work almost everywhere, including on many buses. If a card machine offers to charge you in euros, decline and pay in lei.
• Trains: InterRegio is the fast-ish class; Regio stops everywhere. Second class is fine. Delays of 15–30 minutes are normal, so don't plan a train that lands you at the airport with 90 minutes to spare.
• Language: Romanian, with Hungarian widely spoken in Cluj and a good deal of English from anyone under about 40.
• Heat: the plateau towns are warm but survivable; Bucharest in late July can hit the high thirties. Do the capital early or late, never at 3pm.

For route ideas beyond this one, the national tourism board's site at romaniatourism.com is a decent starting point — the fortified Saxon churches at Viscri and Biertan are the obvious extension if you can add a sixth day.