After our GM/SAIC experience, we took the ferry across the river to the country side of the Expo. This one side was about 3x the size of the corporate side, and held hundreds of pavilions. It seemed like every country had one, and those that couldn’t afford one on their own grouped together to have regional pavilions (I think there was a Caribbean section, an African section, etc). This is where the lines got really long, with Japan being the most hyped and thus the longest line. What was funny was that since it was a sunny day, almost everyone had umbrellas up. Asians do not like the sun or want their skin to be dark. You would never see so many umbrellas on a sunny day in the western part of the world.
The country pavilions were more fun to look at from the outside than to see from the inside. We only made it into a few (we tried to hit up those with no lines outside, and the majority of the day was spent walking from one pavilion to another) but none of the ones we went into had much to say. I was expecting to see how each country was dealing with population growth as that was the supposed to be the whole point of the Expo, but in each were just more trippy images and loud sounds. In the morning we went to Nepal and Cuba, we then had lunch in Mexico, and in the afternoon went to Brazil and Canada. The only one that even remotely had something to say about the country’s urban development was Brazil’s pavilion. Nonetheless, it was nice to say that I’ve been to a World Expo and the architecture of the pavilions was worth going to see.
One final story about the Expo—because it is so spread out, they have shuttle busses that take visitors to the various parts of the Expo. I’m not sure why, but they don’t have nearly enough of these and they have attendants literally shoving people into the busses so the doors can close behind them. When we were on one, I was chest to chest with a big black man who was working the Africa pavilion. My forehead was pressed up against his chin, and the attendants kept pushing more people on the bus! It was probably the most uncomfortable five minutes of my life but we just had to laugh at the situation. We even saw them pushing old people onto the busses.
Pictures: The shuttle bus; Various country pavilions
No comments:
Post a Comment