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We return to the Expo after a day at Universal Studios. This time we arrive shortly after our entry time, 11 a.m. It is already evident at the entrance that there are significantly more people than on previous days, but tafter all, it's Friday. The first pavilion we encounter is Nepal, but we only see the shopping and restaurant area, as the queue is too long. Between the heat and the fact that it's the last day, we don't want to wait in long queues, so we wonder what we'll be able to see.
We try with Germany, but—as expected—they’ve closed the line. Korea, however, is accessible, and it’s the most beautiful pavilion. At the entrance, each group is asked to say, in one word, what matters most to them: my son speaks and says “family,” which is exactly what I would have said. In the first hall, voices are heard first, followed by music derived from those voices. Then there’s an experiment where your breath is transformed into giant bubbles that fall from the ceiling. In the last room, there’s a video about a girl in 2040 who, with her friends, uses AI to complete a musical piece her grandfather was composing when he died. I’m in tears.
We pick up
where we left off two days earlier, with the Saudi Arabian pavilion. Beautiful
architecture, reminiscent of desert structures. The content reflects the image
the country wants to project: technology, natural wonders (especially marine),
sports, women running in parks without veils and wearing tight pants. And once
again, oil is never mentioned.
After a
delicious lunch at the Spanish restaurant, we resume with a pavilion I’m very
curious about: India’s. Among the big countries, India has always been the one
that believed the least in the Expo: in Milan, its pavilion was basically a
market, and at others I’ve attended, it wasn’t even present. This time it’s a
bit better, but still not what you’d expect from a country of its size: nice
architecture, evocative, but lacking a narrative thread. The most interesting
part is still the market, where I meet someone who worked at Milan’s Expo.
Nearby are
a series of smaller pavilions: we find three with little or no line. We start
with what they call the “Baltics,” but even though they say “Baltics are one,”
in reality it’s only Latvia and Lithuania; Estonia is one of the three EU
countries not present (the others are Greece and Cyprus). There’s a lot of talk
about start-ups—I learn Vinted is Lithuanian, while my son notes the absence of
Revolut (also Lithuanian). Basketball is also a topic, especially Lithuanian
basketball, which played a central role in Shanghai (where Lithuania was
by herself).
Next, we
visit Cambodia and Algeria, two “tourist” pavilions—Cambodia focuses mainly on
its temples. Algeria places great emphasis on women and celebrates its two
Olympic champions. One of them is quite well known in Italy, her name is Imane
Khelif; I think they rally around her, while if she were Italian, she’d
probably have more haters here than in the countries of her rivals.
We also
visit two “common” pavilions. One has a bit of a line at the entrance; I
thought it was due to security checks, but no, those at the entrance to the
Expo are considered sufficient. The reason is that there are two countries at
war, chhosing opposite approaches: Israel completely ignores the war,
instead talking about its humanitarian missions (elsewhere) and the “lives it
saves,” which, in the current context, sounds chilling; Ukraine, on the other
hand, makes the war its central theme: the stand is an exhibition of gadgets in
national colors and the message “not for sale,” which makes a strong impact.
Other
stands that stuck with me:
- Jamaica features giant photos of Usain Bolt and Bob Marley, and the bobsled in their colors;
- the Somalia and Dominican Republic stands are also focused on sports—Somalia speaks of youth empowerment through football, in collaboration with Como, and the Dominican Republic highlights baseball;
- the Slovenia stand is beautiful, centered on tourism;
- someone actually talks about oil: East Timor.
- The Central African Republic is perhaps the only country, apart from Ukraine, that talks about its problems: deforestation and species extinction.
- Benin's stand is curious, first talking about its history, omitting that in the early years after independence it was called Dahomey, then talking about its tourist flows, without specifying which places are visited and why, then talking about the fact that it offers citizenship to the descendants of slaves, and only at the end writing “aware of the role we played in the slave trade”.
We also visited the ‘Earth at night’ pavilion: a huge globe depicting the earth at night, with lights. We try to go to the Italian pavilion, asking if they will let us in as Italians. They say no, but tell us that there isn't much of a queue, ‘an hour to an hour and a half’, but we don't have that much time. We only have time for one more large pavilion, so we choose Singapore, right next to Italy: impressive, but with few links to the country. If you went in blind, you would only realise which country it was towards the end.
We take a tour, trying to see the areas we haven't seen yet, but we don't go to the area opposite our entrance, the one towards the west entrance. However, we should have managed to see all the national pavilions, or almost all of them, from the outside. There is still time for a small pavilion: we choose Bangladesh. It tells the story of the country, starting with the struggle for independence, and devotes a lot of space to its ties with Japan, including ties that are not something to be proud of: it mentions the judge at the Tokyo war crimes trial (a judge representing India, but originally from present-day Bangladesh) who contested the legitimacy of the trial and called for the acquittal of the defendants.
We leave, thinking about everything we didn't get to see. I particularly think of pavilions that I have fond memories of from other Expos and that I didn't see this time because they could only be visited by reservation (the Netherlands) or weren't present at all: first and foremost Morocco (the most beautiful in both Zaragoza and Shanghai), then Mexico (the largest country not present) and New Zealand. See you in two years in Belgrade