American Travel Blogs (V/V): “Ep. 51: LONG, HOT, and SMELLY. Cluj Napoca, Romania,Transylvania Trave
Travel Vlogger: Aubrey and Harry from The Budget Savvy Travelers
August 2016
The experience of the couple in Romania is documented in several videos, as their stay in the country spanned over a six days. Their departure towards Cluj-Napoca is miserable, as they don’t seem to understand how train platforms work:
'’cause in Romania, the signs are always wrong, the people are always wrong, everything is always wrong’ (min 00:50).
This beginning of their journey to Cluj underlines Edward Said’s observation, that the Westerner sees the East as a place of disaster, a hostile territory ( also reinforced in another of their videos titled ‘Audrey’s worried about getting ROBBED! Bucharest, Romania Travel Guide’).Moreover, there’s no way to keep track of anything, there’s no system, no platform number, don’t know which platform is the right one, ‘you’re just supposed to know all this stuff’, sending one to imagine a closed-off community. However, their experience again sends to what the other bloggers have signaled, that Romania is not necessarily a tourist destination in itself, as the train stations, in this case, are not equipped with visible signs for foreigners (or for Romanians, for that matter).
‘People in Romania must never get arthritis. 'cause they’re always in a sauna’ (min 1:52), observers Aubrey, while on the train.
Still on the subject of trains, Harry notes that‘It’s like 1800 stagecoach’ min 2:41, with the trains moving 15 miles/ hour, very slowly ‘unbelievable’. But he makes no pertinent commentary, no research as to the cause, and as such, he doesn’t seem to know that even Romanians make fun of the Romanian railway tracks (article on times new roman). Aubrey and Harry comment that the train is moving so slowly that they can read the newspapers on the ground, but without any political context, which other bloggers have been able to prove with, their viewers are left with an overall impression of the country, that doesn’t necessarily reflect reality.
‘You feel like you’re in the middle of Romania’ how does it feel?” asks Harry.” Free”, answers Aubrey in the only positive moment of their experience Unfortunately, she doesn’t go into details, so their audience has no way of vicariously living the sudden positivity of the Romanian countryside.
Harry accidentally renames the city of Cluj-Napoca as “Clujnadorka”, as he forgets where he is. It is true that the Romanian language seems to be somewhat of a puzzler in terms of pronunciation for foreigners, especially English-speakers, but this episode speaks about the feeling of loss one might experience in a foreign place. Names give things authenticity and make them real, make them knowable and familiar. Not being able to name the place one is in creates a distance between that person and the space around them, in this case, deepening the miserable feeling of the couple.
Furthermore, they complain about the smell on the train, and conclude that ‘It’s not necessarily the train, it’s the people on the train. They stink’ (min. 4:03).
They have a disgusting experience in an airbnb apartment which had been rated extremely well, when they discover hair in the bed, a dirty, bug infested floor, and no cleaning supplies.
The travel vlog is definitely the negative experience in this series, and it also serves as a demonstration of the difference between the traveler and the tourist. Aubrey and Harry are the tourists, as they make no effort to understand the place they’re in, but make a visible effort to stay away from the only genuine source of knowledge about the place: the people themselves, as they occupy all the seats in a train cabin by placing bags on them, so that nobody comes in, to keep their cabin ‘clean’. In this respect, they fulfill Stowe’s concept of the ritualistic tourist, as they seem to simply hop from place to place. Moreover, they make no attempt at a commentary upon the situations they find themselves in, but rather simply document them as they are, in a tone of complaint, offering no context for any of them. The feeling left with is that of profound dissatisfaction at something vague: the ‘situation’ of Romania.
‘All I have to say is one thing: get me the hell out of Romania’ (min 7:41)
Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP4DUT_SOK0
