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POST, PHONES AND
EMAIL |
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Major post offices are open Monday to Saturday from 7am to 8pm, and
on Sundays from 8am to noon; like the red-painted mail boxes, they are
marked Posta . Stamps ( timbru ) and prepaid envelopes ( plic ) can be
bought here; there may be long queues, but they're almost certainly not
for stamps. Stamps are often huge and several are needed, so stick them
on before writing your card.
Sending mail home from Romania is relatively pricey - $0.70 to overseas
destinations - and takes about five days to Britain, two weeks to North
America and Australasia. If you're sending important packages, you're
probably better off using a courier service, such as DHL, which has
offices in Bucharest, Brasov, Cluj, Constanta, Craiova and Timisoara.
Letters can be sent poste restante to main post offices in Romania: make
sure they're addressed Officiul Postal no. 1, poste restante , followed
by the name of the town, and that the recipient's last name is
underlined. To collect letters, you'll have to show your passport and
pay a small fee. Important messages should be sent by postcard, as
letters from abroad can go missing if they look as if they might contain
dollars. American Express also offer a poste restante service to their
cheque/cardholders at their office in Bucharest.
Phone, fax and email
The telephone service is at last seeing some much-needed improvements,
such as a new fibre-optic link from Arad to Constanta (linking Hungary
and Turkey), thanks to loans from the World Bank and European Bank.
Private phones are still relatively uncommon, but as more people buy
into the service and exchanges change over to digital connections,
telephone numbers are being expanded (by changing the first digit) to
accommodate the demand - there is a wait of several years for connection.
Not surprisingly, mobile phones are popular, but even so, service is
less than ideal - in such a hilly country reception is patchy, and if
you call a phone that's switched off you can't yet leave a message.
Mobile phone numbers are designated by a phone code beginning with 09.
Most public phones are orange card-phones , used both for internal and
international calls; there are still a few blue coin-phones used for
calls within the county, which cost L100 for three minutes. Phone-cards
( cartela telefonica ) currently sell for L50,000 ($2.50) and L100,000
($5); insert them with the gold lozenge foremost and facing upwards, and
after a few seconds you should get a sign indicating that you can start
dialling; at the end wait until the message scoateti cartela indicates
you can safely remove the card. Calls are most expensive from 7am to 7pm
Monday to Friday and 7am to 3pm on Saturday, and cheapest from 11pm to
7am daily.
All towns and many villages have a Romtelecom office (usually open
weekdays 6.30am-10pm, sometimes seven days a week), where the staff will
connect your call. You'll normally pay the three-minute minimum in
advance, and the balance afterwards.
International calls can be made from card-phones, from Romtelcom offices
(with a wait of ten minutes or so, as a rule), or by dialling 971 for
the international operator from domestic phones and the better hotels.
Calls to Britain from Romtelecom offices cost about $1 a minute, and to
North America and Australasia $2; from card-phones they cost a bit more,
so the cards don't last long. Using hotel facilities inevitably means a
steep service charge, so always ask the price beforehand. An alternative
is to use a direct access number to your home telecom company, billing
either your chargecard or the number you're calling. However, chargecard
calls from Romania are peculiarly expensive - a third more than from
neighbouring countries.
Faxes ( telefax ) are increasingly common now, easily found in the top
hotels and in principal post offices. Email has yet to make much impact,
although where Internet cafés do exist - generally smokey dives packed
with teenagers leering at Lara Croft - we've listed them in the text.
Unfortunately connections are slow, meaning it can take an hour just to
read your mail, though it is cheap, around $1/hour or less.
Useful phone numbers
PHONING ROMANIA FROM ABROAD
Dial the international access code + 40 (country code) + area code (minus
initial 0) + number
Australia tel 0011
Canada tel 011
Ireland tel 010
New Zealand tel 00
UK tel 00
USA tel 011
PHONING ABROAD FROM ROMANIA
Dial the country code + area code (minus initial 0) + number
Australia tel 0061
Canada tel 001
Ireland tel 00353
New Zealand tel 0064
UK tel 0044
USA tel 001
USEFUL ACCESS NUMBERS
BT Direct tel 01800/4444
Canada Direct tel 01800/5000
USA Direct (AT&T) tel 01800/4288
Sprint tel 01800/0877
WorldPhone (MCI) tel 01800/1800
OTHER USEFUL NUMBERS
tel 930 directory enquiries for business numbers
tel 931 & 932 directory enquiries for domestic numbers (A-L and M-Z
respectively)
tel 936 TAROM
tel 952 rail information
tel 953 taxi
tel 955 police
tel 959 weather forecast
tel 961 ambulance/rescue ( salvarea )
tel 981 fire service
tel 971 international operato
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