OK, since we've officially confused ourselves, let's just get straight to the futuristic abandoned stuff, shall we?

Our highly industrialized world has created vast tracts of concrete and steel and ... trash. Lots and lots of trash. When the tides of mankind shift, things that were once its prized brainchildren are abandoned to the elements to slowly fade away. But when you step into some of these vast cities of rust and tetanus, it feels strangely like you've stepped into some far-flung era when the future is the past and the past is ... the ancient past, we guess?

7 Spomeniks -- the Balkans

Jan Kempenaers

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When you see something like that looming in the distance, you just stepped through a Stargate onto some distant world, or out of a time machine into a future Earth ruled by your childhood bully, and this is his winged emblem. Or maybe that thing is the time machine. Or maybe, just maybe, it's a Spomenik.

What the hell is a Spomenik, you ask? Well, Americans weren't the only ones to have a World War II "Greatest Generation" -- the Yugoslavian government worshiped and idolized the sacrifices made during World War II, and as a result, thousands of these monuments to the war sprouted up all throughout Yugoslavia.

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Apparently the only rule when designing a Spomenik was: 1) Make it fucking weird. They ranged from Godzilla-sized viruses:

Jan Kempenaers

To Boba Fett's bachelor pad:

Jan Kempenaers

"Wait till you see my jet pack course out back. The 'Sarlacc pit' obstacle gets me every time."

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But then the Yugoslavian dream ended in the early '90s when the country tore itself apart. Most of the Spomeniks were torn down, but many still stand abandoned throughout the Balkans, their original symbolism lost to time. Today, they presumably only serve to alternately freak out and confuse the hell out of any tourists who happen upon them.