Ah yes, I see that several new people have been coming to the blog. If that’s you, welcome aboard! There are over 400 articles on this website, some of them very awesome and enlightening and hilarious and the rest… well you’ll see ;)

For those of you who have been around a while, you’ll note that there is a new graphic in the title bar. I’ve been working on a big project and it required me to brush off my old design skills. I must say it’s been a lot of fun (the fooling around with graphics programs part) and so I’m going to try to design a custom theme for the blog. We’ll see how it goes!

Gosh I wish I could let you guys all know about all the other stuff I got cooking but… I hate to spoil it before it’s rarin’ to rip. I am still working on getting my book(s) in bookstores here in Romania so that’s definitely one of the projects I’m working on.

The other project involves taking tourism to the next level. I must say this has to be the most frustrating thing I’ve ever encountered in recent memory. On one hand, I keep meeting tourists and visitors here on business and universally they love Romania and have a wonderful time, etc. And on the other hand, it’s like pulling teeth to try to find some Romanians who want to do anything to promote more tourism.

Sigh… the Tourism Minister, Her Royal Highness Elena Udrea is only concerned with political jockeying and potentially running for mayor of Bucharest. The tourism office here in Cluj doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. Yet they’ve got 16,000 euros to build yet another tourism website. And then half the cities in Romania with some good tourist attractions do not even have a website at all. Most of the rest have email addresses that end in yahoo.com for goodness’ sake. They’ll spend a hundred grand to get Wizz Air to fly to their city but not 50 bucks to set up a website. Very strange…

I am however in contact with a few good people, so it’s not all hopeless. It’s just so strange for me that foreigners find Romania amazing and thrilling and wonderful and want to invite all their friends and Romanians can barely seem to get it together to get more people here beyond those that blew in with the winds. And every tourist I’ve ever met is spending money, no? Seems like it’d be an obvious thing and yet it isn’t.

Reminds me of something that happened two years ago. I had some free time and so I went down to a local NGO here to volunteer my time. This, by the way, was a local branch of a very well-established international organization which you’d know if I said the name. I get down there and there’s literally five people on staff, doing almost nothing. They told me a sad tale of how the “criza” was drying up donations and all that. And finally they tell me that even the main office in Bucharest wasn’t kicking money to them any more either. So they literally had no donations or funds raised in the last six months at all. None. Zero dollars, lei or euros.

Immediately I start firing off ideas, as I used to work as a fundraiser for a similar outfit back in the United States. Some of my ideas cost absolutely nothing, such as setting up a Facebook page or a Twitter account. And yet they all stared at me with blank faces, totally uninterested in fundraising or any of the rest. So we talk and talk and what it boiled down to was all five of them were getting paid their salaries so they had no interest in getting out of the office, raising funds, doing some good works for the community, etcetera. Long as the were getting paid, why bother, eh?

So they never invited me back. And a month later I saw they set up a Twitter account, which they used about five times before giving even that up. Pitiful. And yet that’s how it often is here in Romania. Some poor office peon in the city’s “tourism office” has a job and gets paid, but what’s their motivation to actually do anything to bring in more tourists? It’s not like they’re going to get paid for every tourist that arrives. So they push papers around and attend meetings and tourism expositions and the like and meanwhile do nothing proactive like getting a real email address much less anything more sophisticated.

Oh mercy… it drives me nuts. And so the only people who are motivated are people running hotels and the like. So bringing them all together to get something done collectively is like herding cats. But… what can I say? In for a penny, in for a pound. I have strong feelings about this country and I want to do right by it. I truly do.

So… other than a few hints, that’s what’s going on. I really, really want to announce what’s going on but as I said, I’m going to wait until it’s a done deal. It’s some really good and fun stuff though, I promise :)

Oh, one additional thing and I almost can’t believe I forgot LOL. With a little help, I have now translated the new Codul Muncii into English. I know a lot of foreign people hire Romanians and I thought it’d be a good thing to have a copy of the law to refer to.

You can find it on Amazon here, Kindle version here and other digital formats here. It’s written with British spelling because I found a half-baked translation online with British spelling and so I kept it, plus obviously most foreigners here speak and use the British English.

Well there you go. I’m still here, plugging away like the Little Engine That Could. It’s mostly a lonely effort but thanks to all of you who read this blog, link to it, connect with me on Facebook, Twitter and all the rest of you, slowly but surely it’s happening.

Oh one last thing. The Woman insists I post more pictures on here and I know everyone likes pictures so I promise to do it ;) Now that the weather has finally gotten properly warm and sunny and spring-like, I will get out more and snap some pictures.

Until then…. thanks for all your support!