This is one of the most interesting group of Sweet 16 cities I can remember in The Best City To Visit Travel Tournament. Over the next few days we’ll lose one more Romanian city between Cluj-Napoca versus Brasov and as the competition heats up, all of the entries can boost their support using these winning strategies from previous years. For the third round in a row I used my tie-breaking privilege to bump Havana over London while Paris jumped two entries, Budapest and Ljubjana in the Second Round’s modified match-ups. On the other side of the bracket, Istanbul has a good chance to knock off Alba Iulia and Cape Town could again quietly advance another round.
Whatever happens though it will be all based on your votes! You have until this Sunday, March 16th at 12pm US EST to pick your favorite 8 cities. Best of luck to everyone! Those of you reading through email and RSS will have to click-through to this page to vote.
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Good luck everyone and remember, the Elite 8 round begins next Tuesday, March 18th!
Anil, just as I suspected, your contest has become a joke. I certainly have nothing against the good people from Romania that follow your blog, but something has got to be changed. I think even they would agree. It’s another example of “unintended consequences”.
As a romanian – I kind of agree…
This isn’t the first Best City to Visit Tournament controversy and it won’t be the last:
http://foxnomad.com/2012/04/10/4-years-on-the-controversies-drama-and-politics-of-the-best-city-to-visit-tournaments/
And normally I like to stay out of them until after the contest ends as remaining impartial is important to me. However, I’ll say on this topic first of all, this year’s contest hasn’t ended and while there are a lot of Romanian cities remaining, Buenos Aires or Seville could still win. At this point no city or country has ever won back to back contests so it is early to make judgements.
In the meantime I, you, and my audience are being introduced to a number of Romanian cities that people feel deserve to be called the best in the world. I wonder if there would be as many complaints if the remaining cities were Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York?
If you’ve read my about page:
http://foxnomad.com/about/
you know that I started my professional career as a (white hat) hacker. I have an appreciation for learning, understanding, and working with systems in unique and different ways. The people who’ve nominated Romanian cities have not cheated or done anything against the rules to get their nominations this far. They’re organized, clever, and passionate.
Additionally, in previous contests there have been multiple Turkish, Spanish, etc. cities as well. While I will take everyone’s thoughts into consideration after the contest (watch for that post) at the moment since the competition is ongoing I can’t make any concrete decisions.
Besides, who’s to say that Romania doesn’t have a lot of really damn good cities? In fact, that’s what people *are* saying, with their votes.
I’ve written this post to show anyone who enters the contest how they can greatly increase their chances of winning:
http://foxnomad.com/2014/02/27/effective-strategies-can-learn-use-win-best-city-visit-travel-tournament/
It’s the best city contest, not the best country contest. Good luck to all of the cities and thank you everyone for your thoughts, comments, and participation.
Don´t be mad…just vote.I Also agree that Havana is nicer then Craoiva,Timisoara is no way close to Singapore and Alba Iulia is waste of time next to Istanbul…but there are a few that are worthy of Best city to visit.
Sighisoara is the place of birht of Vlad Dracula,Brasov has http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biserica_Neagr%C4%83 ,very important in the time of the Silk road for all non muslims and together with Alba Iulia and Sibiu(the coolest city) they formed the barrier that stopped the ottoman empire from invading Europe…So only for these reasons i think we deserve to win once