Romanian village thanks Snoop Dogg for unlikely spotlight
The small town of Bogata, Romania on Saturday rejoiced in an unlikely surge of tourism interest after rapper Snoop Dogg mistakenly tagged the village on Instagram.
The California hip-hop great posted a selfie of himself on the photo-sharing site after a recent show in Bogota, Colombia but inadvertently checked himself in as being in the Romanian city, population 2,000.
In a textbook case of social media savvy, Romanian entrepreneurs quickly established an English-language website, "www.visitbogata.com," that featured pictures of rolling green hills and promised -- in a touch of Snoop Dogg's verse -- "the chillest weekend you could imagine."
The town thanked Snopp Dogg on Facebook on Saturday and said that Bogata in Romanian means "the rich one."
"And you'll see it's definitely rich in beautiful sights and amazing food," it said. "We are eagerly awaiting your arrival. You would have a really chill time, for sure!"
The tourism website also boasted that visitors would be well connected online in a snide reference to left-wing US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who recently criticized US infrastructure investment by saying that people in the Romanian capital Bucharest had faster Internet than most Americans, an indirect slight that did not sit well in the southeastern European country.
One person apparently persuaded by the tourism campaign was Snoop Dogg himself, who, to paraphrase his most famous song, now knows Bogata's name.
In a new Instagram post late Friday, the rapper and noted marijuana enthusiast showed himself smoking a joint and endorsed the hashtag campaign #VisitBogata.
"Shoutout to my romanian fans, tha boss dogg comm thru real soon !!!"