I went to the Expo expecting to be cynical. Corporate glossy visions of the future… you can already get that at Disneyland, right? Thankfully, my expectations were not met. We arrived early, stayed late, did not exhaust or bankrupt ourselves, and had a good time. We didn’t plan a strategy ahead of time, but looking back, our plan was:
Avoid the long lines. There are about 10 major attractions with long lines, and we skipped most of them. There are hundreds of things to see without any line at all. The most spectacular attraction, the 21st Century, has the longest line. If we go again, we’ll to rush there right at opening time. Hopefully it won’t rain next time.
Baby carriage accessible? Mostly. We were scared from the lofty Holland pavillion by both the line and the many stairs, but most of the halls are handicapped accessible. We carried Christopher into several smaller exhibits.
Lots of rest stops. Christopher was often hungry, thirsty, tired, or needed changing. Don’t rush, stay flexible?
Hungry? Use connections if you got them (Mama’s employer is a sponsoring partner of the Expo), or go ethnic. The country booths have better and cheaper food than the stands outside.
Avoid the propaganda. Concentrate on the country booths.
What did we see? A rather large country in North America was not represented at all, but we did see Sri Lanka, Australia, Andorra, Israel, Egypt, Malta, Luxembourg, France, United Arab Emeriates, Latvia, Lithuania, United Kingdom, Norway, Brazil, Canada, Iceland (fron the outside) and Vietnam (for dinner).
My highlight? Germany. The pavillion was lavish, well thought out, planned to the last detail, and maybe too perfect, but showed a happy, thoughtful ,prosperous and diverse country that Germany could become. As someone who lives here by choice, I hope that’s the direction it will really go.
One thought I couldn’t get out of my mind for a long time last night was “Why is Germany hosting the EXPO 2000 and therefore the world and can’t control the problems with right-wing extremism”??? I’m ashamed to read headlines like this on CNN! How many citizens and government officials have looked the other way for years to have come to accept a sort of nationalist sentiment in some Germans!
I’m very much ashamed of my fellow citizens who are disoriented in their way of thinking. 21 years ago I was an AFS High School Exchange Student in the US and I frequently dealt with questions about the “German Conscience” in relation to the Holocaust. I never thought Right Wing Nationalists would be marching in Germany ever again.
Suddenly politicians are thinking what can be done to stop this mental disease. I like a proposal from the Socialdemocrat Party: if convicted of right-wing activities your driver’s license may be revoked for a minimum of 10 years. That just might be an effective way to give some disoriented young people a moment to think about what they might be about to do!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Heelo dear friend
It has aready been 3 years but still I often think of expo 2000 and llok at all the pictures I took.
I am Canadian and visited expo 2000 with great pleasure, I wish I had been there longer.
I do not understand why the german people did not visit expo an greater number, we had expo 67 here in Montréal and I grew up hearing about how wonderfull it was(55 million visitors.
Best regards
Pierre Caron
Three years after the fact, the story is easy to tell. Expo 2000 was marketed horribly in Germany and almost not at all in the rest of Europe. The early marketing seemed to want to discourage people from coming (it will be crowded, no place to park, don’t bring your car, take the train instead). So when the Expo opened, people didn’t go, and the early news stories were that the Expo was a failure. It wasn’t until mid-summer that word-of-mouth spread the word that the Expo was a fantastic place to visit. The attendance in the last few weeks was very good.
Expo 2000 was a success socially and culturally, but a total bomb financially.