I was pretty sure it will be an easy thing to write - because, firstly, I've already done an article on Expo once, and, secondly, there was so much to write about there.
That first article, however, was written long before I actually got to Expo, so I based it on the Expo's official website's information - which was still so much to write about; after I did get there, though, and after I've spent something like seven hours there - seven hours of zigzagging through the pavilions under the blinding, ruthless sun, classics of our summers, - I feel like it is not that much about the details - details are worth seeing in person, - than it is about the message Expo tries so hard to pass along that I want to write about, make photos about, and that was totally worth almost dying from dehydration that day.
First things first - Expo stands for Universal Exposition that is held regularly from 1844 (much thanks, Queen Victoria). They are united through the topical themes; Milan's Expo used "Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life" and exploits the topics of the malnourishment, hunger, food sources and their varieties. In a nutshell, it is a lot about how not to make an Interstellar movie out of Earth.
The number of participants of this year's Expo is more than 140; the pavilions are lined up along the main street of exhibition - so-called "World Avenue" - that stretches over 3 kilometres. Pavilions are of the three main types - the ones belonging to individual countries/companies/entities (the pavilion of Catholic Church - check); those from the thematic clusters, that unite the countries not being able to build their own pavilions; and thematic areas that explore often very specific (and always endlessly cool) themes (those include both children amusement park and the supermarket where food is packed by robots. The robotic part for now is limited to apples being packed into small boxes though).
All these endless things to see - pavilions, supermarkets, clusters of chocolate and coffee; drinking fountains and lanes of sea salts; restaurants, and coffee places, and outdoor markets; stretches of South American, or Polish, or God-knows-where-from plants growing right in the centre of Northern Italy; the giant Tree of Life that is a part of spectacular light show every evening, - all of those and more are built on the Milan's outskirts to be a living reminder - for these 5 months at least, - that the world, after all, is just a street. Even more so - it's our street, with the rules we set, pavilions we built, food we grow, resources we use, and choices we make. Milan's chosen to feed the planet; now tell me - where is it that our choices can't be just as ambitious.
Expo is somewhat moving, questions-provoking, and endlessly inspiring. It makes you wonder at the potential of our science - Israel is growing vertical fields now; Germany is using projectors that recognise pieces of paper with three tiny plastic buttons on it and automatically play recordings on them. It makes you feel the food (and that was delicious); feel the world (that's such a beautiful place); feel the choices - and the way they define the world around us, for better or for worse.
It also made us feel a bit like having a mild dehydration; we've had to stop our zigzagging and found one of the "water houses" - constructions a Lombardy water company has built specially for Expo. The text on them promise that after Expo will finish these water houses will be used on Italian street on regular basis - we need it desperately in summers anyway, so that might be just the heritage Italy needs.
So you walk that world - that street - up and then you walk it back again, and every country out there is just a part of its neighbourhood, and every pavilion - even the one with the apples-packing robots, - is just a part of something more, and the street you walk through is just as clean as thousands of people passing it daily leave it, and the food you taste is just as awesome as those who grew it, cooked it, served it are. We come through the street and, perhaps, the best that we can do is to leave it better than we've found it; to make it equally beautiful; to share and love what is worth sharing and loving out there.
One of the stuff members of the Lithuanian pavilion told us that food is something we share rather than own - and that was one of the beautiful moments when somebody else's words make everything going on in your head to make quite a bit of perfect sense. The phrase was so right and so totally won me over that I've insisted to have a lunch at their pavilion - even though Lithuania is just three hours away from Belarus, the friend I came to Expo with is actually Lithuanian, and my mom makes the cold borscht just as good as the one I ate there. Still:
Share that food; feed that world; walk that street - with the respect and dignity that it deserves. Make your choices - with all the awareness and consciousness that it takes, because doing so might just be our first common steps to - well, - feeding the planet (and not ending up looking for a new one with the help of the space wormholes).
And make sure to come see it - Milan has never been just so powerfully beautiful.
Expo Milano 2015
Feeding the Planet
