Foot traffic. When you don’t have the tradition of automobile ownership, the arrival of private car ownership creates some challenges. I’ve mentioned the parking issue—there are few organized parking lots and people routinely park on sidewalks, right in the way of pedestrians.

There’s no driver’s ed program in the schools so learning to drive often means enrolling in a private driving school. Driving is chaotic but I often think that people are actually better drivers because of the chaos—the potential dangers cause drivers to be even more watchful. Driver manners vary considerably as well, causing pedestrians to be ever watchful as they cross the streets or walk along the right-of-way.

Foot traffic also means the downtowns have not dried up as have those areas in U.S. cities. (A friend of mine, visiting the U.S. on an exchange program, was surprised by how dead Kansas City's downtown was when he visited the city.)


Here’s a shot of the pedestrian plaza in Nis. The shot was taken at about 4 PM from the balcony of Miedia Center Nis. Traffic will actually increase substantially after 5 PM as people come out to shop, window shop, and socialize. I’ve seen this same scene in Belgrade and Podgorica and Tirana, Albania. The charm of the evening walk is one of the things that attracted me to Podgorica. Some people, right after work, take an afternoon nap to ensure enough energy to enjoy the evening out and it is not unusual to see the plaza busy on a weeknight until midnight. My American habit, of early to bed and early to rise, make it hard for me to take the afternoon nap but a cup of coffee or espresso around 3 or 4 PM gives me a boost to help me stay up at least until 9 or 10 PM. Many of the coffee shops also have tents or awnings that offer protection from the summer sun or a spring shower.

Another feature of the foot traffic is the abundance of small kiosks that sell newspapers, snacks, magazines and cigarettes. This is the primary sales outlet for newspapers. They're stacked horizontally across the front of the stand. There actually is someone inside the stand to collect money.
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A note about Big Brother. It is not, to my knowledge, a co-production with anyone in Bosnia or anywhere else. It's my understanding that B-92 is pursuing the Big Brother project by itself. The move to license national networks is part of a broader effort to decrease the total number of television stations--a source told me a couple of days ago that there are about 300 stations in Serbia--including municipal and private stations. There was a description a few years ago, that I had forgotten, that referred to car wash and garage stations. These were literally small time stations that might have been put on the air by the owner of a very small business. These stations often had few legitimate local programming efforts other than perhaps going to the local video store to rent a movie for airing.

By the way....need a copy of an Oscar winning movie that's not yet available on DVD? You can find it on the streets of Nis. Walk the Line and Brokeback Mountain are both here for about $2.20 each.