Well for those of you who like everything in its place, we are now back in cardinal order :) Again, I just had a ton of subtitling to do on this one so I put out Episode 5 before this one just for the sake of timeliness.

Below you can find Episode 4, all about the wonderful places that people recommend to visit here in Romania. As a person who has been literally to everywhere that is recommended by these folks, I have to heartily concur!

Again, still having some technical issues. Most of the interviews are still being mixed incorrectly (panned to one side) so you can’t listen to these episodes with headphones. If you have some speakers then it’ll be fine though.

Still, all things being considered, it’s not too bad. Essentially I have to assemble these clips “blind” since I can’t preview them beforehand due to my computer being so incredibly ancient. I almost have to laugh as basically I’m staring at little static picture icons of moving video in a long line and then having to “guess” that they’re properly aligned, etcetera then rendering them (14 hours) and then exporting them to a format I can upload (about 12 hours). It’s fun, let me tell ya ;)

Still though, it’s free for you to watch, eh? Soon enough I’ll get the equipment I need to get everything perfect and then find other method of producing these in the high quality that they deserve.

I don’t own a television and rarely even listen to the radio but I did notice the other day that they run a lot of spots (Rom: reclame) on the radio urging people to go visit places in Romania (including several mentioned here in Episode 4). All that is fine and good but I noted that the funding for these ads comes from the European Union from some regional development fund.

Jeez, that almost made me laugh – almost. As you can see above, Romanians themselves have no problem identifying where are some good places to visit in Romania. But where is the Ministry of Tourism in all of this? I’m promoting the heck out of Romania, other foreign bloggers and web site owners are promoting the heck out of Romania, tons of individual Romanians are doing it, the European Union is spending money to promote Romania but where is the Ministry of Tourism?

Sad to say it but we know the answer is “pimping the PDL”, which is Miss Udrea’s political party. I actually have “liked” her stream or news feed (or whatever the term is) on Facebook just to keep an eye on what she and the Tourism Ministry are up to and it’s almost all entirely domestic oriented. I mean I’m glad she’s working on projects like “Improving Energy Efficiency in Low-Income Households” and other things but that’s not really related to tourism, is it?

Sigh…and the worst part is that the chattering nabobs of the foreign media are all in love with this woman. If she actually gave a damn about promoting Romania they would be happy to quote her in article after article or even show footage of her on (foreign) television. Instead she’s too busy grooming her own career inside the PDL with presumably her eye on becoming the future mayor of Bucharest.

Oh well, it is what it is!

Enjoy the free episodes brought to you at zero fucking cost to you, with all of the effort and expense and hours of time all provided by me. And if you really don’t mind, quit leaving snarky comments and clicking on “thumbs down” because I mean really, don’t you have anything better to do? If any of you craven punks want to say this shit to my face, you can find me at Cleo every Wednesday right here in Cluj so come on in and introduce yourself :)