I'm from Romania... I tried to buy the original foam from Rogaine, i know that there are a lot of Minoxidil products out there but i always thought that the brand names like Rogaine instead of generic unknown brands or Propecia instead of finasteride unknown generics also are the best, but this is just me it might be just paranoia in thinking that other manufacturers don't respect the formula as well as the firsts who ever brought it on the market...
As for the hair transplant, i got kind of the same prices from Turkey as from my country, we have here a very reputable clinic with some very good doctors, they are well trained at FUE London and the whole procedure is done only by accredited transplant surgeons, it's the best clinic in the country, it's called Dr. Felix as the doctors that founded it is called, Dr. Felix Popescu, he is a reputable member of the ISHRS and from what i saw he has some great results, he is kind of the only in our country that people go to, even "famous" people bla bla... We had a tragic fire event at a club a couple of years ago and he offered to make free transplants to the victims of the fire, i know that he made some publicity from this but he was famous before anyways and he helped them for free and he had some great results also on them. He is the first doctor in our country who made hair transplant on really bad burned skin and he was awarded some star or prize at Hollywood or something like that...
The prices that i got for transplants vary between 4500 and 6000 euros, in Turkey more cheaper but the difference is that at this doctors clinic in my country, all stages of hair transplantation, namely, anesthesia, extraction and implantation of hair grafts, are very carefully done EXCLUSIVELY BY HIGHLY TRAINED DOCTORS, not by simple technicians, as in the case of other clinics and that's a big plus...
Here is his ISHRS member page :
https://ishrs.org/doctor/felix.popescu@clinicaimplantpar./
If i would have had more money i would have gone in the US or somewhere else or waited on waiting lists for years for Lorenzo or what his name is, but unfortunately i don't, 6000 euros is a lot of money for me anyways but i think it's worth it and you get rid of most of the treatments and so on, if you are lucky of course and it ends up all well... But i'm not decided yet, it's annoying as f*** and i have days when i think of just shaving it and that's that, it's well accepted here in Romania, you don't make 2 steps and don't see a baldy, it's full of them... And i had my share, i'm 33, i had a full head of hair until 30 since it started falling more aggressively, i'm loosing it since 22 or something like that but it was real slow until now and i think that it started to stop now if i take a look at my family history, it's kind of the same pattern, i think and hope at least....
I think i will give minoxidil and Needling a chance for now and see what happens later, i really hope it won't mess my hair more than it is anyways, last time i fucked it up and accelerated my hair loss with it and panicked at the first shed, stopped it and never grew back what i had lost, hair that would eventually would have fallen anyways, but maybe slower than minoxidil made it to fall...