Belgrade Gets its First Kissing and Smoking Zones

Kissing spots were the brainchild of a group of students from the Faculty for Media and Communications in Belgrade.  They say they wanted to allow people to freely express their feelings and thoughts in public.

“We came to the conclusion that everything we think and feel outside the mainstream, is reserved for privacy of four walls. We decided to erase these boundaries,“ said 21 year old Andjela Ceh explaining how she and her friends Petar, Nikola and Sanja came up with the idea.

She says that the chosen locations, which are popular gathering places of Belgraders, are now symbolically marked to encourage everyone who wishes to kiss to do so in public.

“In a way, those are safe locations, where you are allowed to freely and without shame express your feelings,“ said Ceh.

So far nine locations have been chosen by the students, but they expect that more will be suggested by Belgraders trough their facebook and twitter account.

And as the students are encouraging kissing, the activists of the “Piksla” group are hoping to curtail the wayward smokers’ nonchalant attitudes towards dropping their cigarette butts on the streets of Belgrade.

Under the slogan ‘The Streets are not Ashtrays”, the “Piksla” group will soon install two large, one meter high, ashtrays with water at the bottom on five different locations in the city.

They will also symbolically give away pocket ashtrays to smokers, so they could use them when they are not near smoking zones.

“Piksla“ states that smoking zone is a place where people can put out their cigarettes safely and in ecologically friendly way.

Also, by gathering the smokers within the designated zones, they wish to control the damage caused by passive smoking.