Bucharest joins European cities where volunteer Citinerary locals greet tourists

Bucharest has joined the network of European cities where locals greet foreigners within a project called Citinerary. The Romanian capital is thus the fourth city where the voluntary – based Citinerary project expands, after launching in Amsterdam, then expanding to Oslo and to Rotterdam. Four Romanians based in Bucharest have taken the role of locals who meet and greet foreigners interested in discovering the city. The fifth Romanian, Ioana Negulescu, who is currently based in Vienna, is the ‘city captain’, a responsibility she shares with her colleague Ioana Traista, who is based in Bucharest. ‘For the time being, we only cover Bucharest. We want to see how high the demand will be, it usually takes several weeks from launch until information spreads. I think it can work very well in other Romanian cities,” Ioana Negulescu told Romania-Insider.com. Citinerary facilitates the first meeting between a foreigner and any of the locals in the team, based on their common interests. The team in Bucharest is made of Theodor, a photographer and journalist, Alexa, a brand consultant, Alex, a soon-to-be lawyer, and two city captains, both named Ioana. Ioana Negulescu herself has been on the tourist side of the project during her trip to Amsterdam, where she was greeted by the Citinerary founder himself, Robin Cox, who also runs a creative marketing agency. The founder and the other city captains are currently pondering on how the project, now running based on volunteering, could become self-sustaining in the future. Corina Chirileasa, corina@romania-insider.com