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Milan, Italy
I remember, I remember when your neon used to burn so bright and pink, Saturday night kind of pink
There is a reason that I chose to visit Italy and specifically Milan in 2015. From May until the end of October, Milan hosted Expo 2015, a world’s fair that may not have included pavilions from every country (I'm talking to you Canada) but still had enough that no person could visit them all, even with a two day pass and an ambition that often ignores any physical or mental repercussions. The theme of the expo was food, an inoffensive and important theme that could be used to justify almost anything, from nightmarishly upsetting talking food mascots to propaganda films showing people from every imaginable country smiling, eating and smiling once more.
This first picture is probably my favorite picture from the expo and possibly my favorite of the slideshow, meaning I guess that it's all downhill from here. England took the theme of food and decided that for England that meant bees. Not that British people eat bees (or at least I think they don't eat bees) but instead it was all about the whole honey angle. The main attraction was an abstract hive designed by artist Wolfgang Buttress, a giant open metal cube with an open sphere inside. Considered the best pavilion of Expo 2015 (it won the best pavilion award at the close of the expo), it was hard to miss, impossible to walk by and pretty spectacular in person.
I intentionally chose to visit Expo 2015 in its last month (or so). I thought that the weather would be cooler and that there was a chance it wouldn't be as busy. While I was right about the weather, I couldn't have been more wrong about the crowds. The place was shockingly busy and the crowds were outrageous. Even on my second day when the rain and wind were fierce, the lines and crowds remained just as bad or sometimes even worse. Some pavilions had wait times of over three hours to enter, meaning that right from the start I realized that I would have to make tough decisions on what was worth waiting for. I chose to see as many pavilions as possible that had shorter lines and skipped most of the massive waits, a strategy that allowed me to fill two solid days of expo fun but also had me intentionally skipping a few of the big ticket pavilions.
Not only were the crowds massive but the actual, physical place was massive as well. It was planned like a Roman city, which basically means it was on a grid. There were two main boulevards- one was the Decumano (pictured below) and the other was the far smaller, perpendicular Cardo. The Cardo was all about Italy and featured regional and national Italian pavilions as well as the Tree of Life, an abstract tree that featured regular light and water shows. The Decumano featured all of the other countries and was about a mile long. This was the first big international trip that I have taken since my phone (iPhone 6) and watch (Apple Watch) have worked together to give me some sense on how much walking I have been doing, and on the first Expo day I walked well over 15 miles up and down the Decumano and Cardo and every possible pavilion I could get myself into. That's a lot of walking.
The UK Pavilion was easily the most photogenic, but my favorite pavilion was from France. Possibly affecting my decision was the fact that France had its own boulangerie and they baked their own bread inside the pavilion. The place smelled as close to perfect as any bread baking pavilion in an international expo ever could. All of the pavilions were not only about food (in some sense) but also then sold food afterwards. Some of it looked good and some of it was quite good, although the Belgian fries were actually really, really overrated.
Not all of the pavilions were sponsored by a country. There were Coca Cola and McDonalds pavilions as well as a huge setup by Eately. Additionally there were also some large international companies including Vanke, a Chinese construction concern who hired Daniel Libeskind to design a corporate pavilion. It's exterior was far more impressive than its interior, which was far, far more impressive than its content. Inside haphazardly placed monitors showed a short film about how Chinese people build things and also eat. And the eating part was totally out of context and obviously not a concern or priority for the Vanke Corporation of Shenzhen. But on the positive side, the outside the building looked cool, so at least that's something.
In the rain and the wind on my second full day on the Decumano, I waited close to three hours to see the Italian Pavilion and realized soon after that no level of spectacle could ever really justify such a wait. The truth is that most of the pavilions’ actual exhibitions were kind of lame, there's only so much you can do with the theme of food and togetherness. There were lots of interesting parlor tricks like water fountains that formed text or large models or fun house rooms, but when it came down to it, every pavilion basically said that despite our differences, we all enjoy our regional food specialties. Now wait in another line to buy some Belgian fries.
The exhibits inside the super sized Italian Pavilion were often pretty pointless and felt like time killers. For example, an exhibit asked the question: what if there was no Italy? To illustrate this question (that no one has ever asked), there was a massive model of a map of Europe with Italy completely missing, with huge cliffs at the drop offs of its political borders. This is what you waited almost three hours to see. Luckily it wasn't all completely pointless- there were a series of very busy, consecutive rooms with mirrors and videos that (generally) showed images of Italy and were a brief blast of fun in a pavilion that you spent almost three hours to get in followed by an unmistakable urge to just find your way out of it as quickly as possible.
The crowds and the entire Expo may be gone now, but to remember what was once there, here are a few extra pictures of a few of the pavilions, submitted (for once) without additional comment.
