Replace your horn every 12,000 miles

I suspect you've never had to get your car horn replaced. You've probably never even considered the fact that the horn on your car may not outlast the car itself. I also suspect that you do not use your car horn as regularly as your turn signal or brake.

When driving in Serbia, it is not only acceptable, but expected that you should lay on your horn at least twice every few miles. Now, I don't mean giving out a little "meep meep" to the driver who didn't notice that the light changed. I mean, laaaaying on the horn when the driver in front of you hasn't taken a rolling start into the intersection when the light is about to turn green. 

Let's examine this innovative use of the horn. First, it makes drivers incapable of considering alternative routes. For example, let's say you are about to pull onto a small, one way street and notice a tow truck up ahead is blocking the way as it prepares to tow an illegally parked vehicle. You may look ahead and decide not to turn onto the blocked street, thus avoiding the problem. But in Belgrade, you'd just pull up right behind the tow truck, wait 10 seconds, and then lay on your horn. This will not cause the tow truck to move. In fact, the work may slow down. In addition, it will degrade the quality of life of anyone who can hear your car horn. Even better, as you do this, other cars are drawn to the sound of your horn and line up behind you. They also begin to honk. It's amazingly ineffective.

Second, in general, honking will rarely have any effect on the other drivers around you. Honking is a tool for releasing frustration. Drivers don't inch up or move out of the way when others honk at them. Every driver has earned the right to put his or her car exactly where it is at that exact moment in time and no one can take that away from them. Now, at the next block, some jackass may very well be in his or her way and they will be come the honker instead of the honkee. Because, obviously, the situation is completely different.

Protesters have learned to harness drivers' inability to find alternate routes and their ease of horn use with the already bad traffic situation in Belgrade. It doesn't take a very large group to bring traffic in Belgrade to a complete stop. A couple weeks ago, a large protest was staged outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This building sits on one of the main arteries into and out of the city (sort of like Constitution Ave in DC). The protesters managed to block the entire road in both directions on a Friday afternoon. At first, as I walked past I thought, "This doesn't look so bad, you turn right, head up the side street a few blocks, then cut back down."  But, the further I got from the protest, the more I could see the effects of the traffic snarl. The blocked road leads directly to a major traffic circle where 7 roads come together. Each of these 7 roads suffered major blockage because no one could feed into or out of the circle. The radiation of the backup penetrated every block I covered as I headed northeast in a textbook definition of gridlock. And, like clockwork, every time the light turned green in one direction, that entire line of cars would lay on their horn. Unfortunately, there was nowhere anyone could go.

As the car horns rang out in unison, I'd occasionally hear one give out. A sputter, a gasp, and then it sounded like an old goat. But did this stop the driver from pressing on? Oh no, each driver seemed convinced that his honk was crucial to the resolution of this traffic nightmare.

Viminacium

As an American, I still find it very novel to visit historical sites that are over 250 years old. The fact that there are Roman ruins in Serbia seems pretty cool to me. Last weekend we went to Viminacium which, it turns out, was a pretty significant Roman city. The site is only a little over an hour outside of Belgrade. This is the first time I left town to the east and it was amazing how quickly we left any sort of suburbs and entered into farmland. 

The trip to Viminacium provides a nice overview of Serbian life, you see Belgrade, then some enormous suburban housing areas, pass through some mountainous hillsides, then quickly get into fields and farms. Finally, you hit small, rural towns where the residents use their tractors for daily transportation. Avoiding the horse drawn carts and strawberry sellers, you continue down the crumbling streets through the tiny town. Depending on the route you take you can drive between the power company's near-bursting steam pipes and the trash dump or you can drive through the abandoned part of town now taken over by gypsy squatters. Then you drive right up to the entrance of the power company and pass it on by. It definitely feels like you're doing something wrong. In the end, your destination is out in the middle of a farmer's field.

Viminacium itself is an amazingly preserved and, to my untrained eye, a very well maintained and excavated site. We were taken on a private tour (being the only English speakers around) by an archeologist who explained the work that is going on. Most impressive to me is the way the archeologists have left things in place for visitors to see - like skeletons lying in open tombs. 

One of the best features of the site are the frescos inside some of the tombs. Rather than removing the frescoed walls of the tombs to museums, they have built tunnels up into the tombs and put dim lights inside. You can walk up under the tiny coffins and see the inside as the original inhabitant would have. Creepy? Yes, but the context was very cool.

Three major areas have currently been uncovered but there are hundreds of acres (at least) of city beneath the fields still to be excavated. The work could continue for decades more. A nearby power plant is interested in the coal below ground but there seems to be some sort of arrangement worked out due to the prior knowledge the plant had about the site's historical value. Somehow, the plant seems to be obligated to continue buying land from the local farmers as more sites are found to excavate and avoid strip mining the area. An oddly civil arrangement. 

Combining the easy, educational drive with the knowledge dropped by the tour guide, I place Viminacium high on the list of places to take visitors when they visit Belgrade.