The Top Tourist in the Country: Romanian Edition

There should be a disclaimer: this post is not about traveling, at least not in the meaning we all know traveling. This post is about a person they call in Romania the “first tourist in the country”.

An introduction needs to be made here. Those who lived during the communist regime in Romania know that the communist ruler, Nicolae Ceausescu, was known as ‘the first hunter in the country.”. It was that because he used to go hunting and killed so many wild animals. Also, rumour has it, he was “helped” to kill those animals by real hunters who shot at the same animals like he did, such as not for the first hunter of the country to miss any shot.

Now, the current President, Klaus Johannis, is known as the first tourist in the country. This is because he is only rarely at his office. More than often, he travels to the Romanian mountains, to the Black Sea or abroad. He even admitted that this job as Romania’s President fulfilled his dream as a young boy, in love with his current wife, Carmen. He admitted he had promised her they would see the whole world, and this job fulfilled that dream.

Johannis traveled so much that, according to the official data, he spent almost his whole traveling budget for one year in just five months. Namely, the guy spent EUR 5 million, around 1 million monthly. It is good to be President, right?

The expensive trips to Asian countries or to South American ones emptied the country’s travel budget. For one flight to Japan alone, Johannis spent half a million Euros. He traveled in the most luxurious conditions possible, with a private jet only millionaires rent when flying.

Johannis did very little for a now crippled country in foreign politics. Romania failed all the exams he could fail, from failing to access the Schengen area to the failure of playing a more important regional role. The person responsible for all this mess is the first tourist in the country.

The man has only one year left in the office. He has been traveling a lot during the last nine years but is prone to travel even more in the next 12 months. This is why we bet our bottom dollar the Presidency travel budget will be at least doubled this year.