First off, me and another girl tried to visit Italy, but ha. Ha. Ha.
Five hours of queue in the morning.
No thank you.
So we went to Kazakhstan, which had three hours but it was actually quick so we only lost one hour and a half. The first awesome thing was that they had thought about entertaining guests who were queueing. There was a guy who was singing, then two girls dancing, three other girls dancing, a woman singing, and so on. Basically just waiting was already entertaining. But once inside, we were made to sit while a girl told us the history of the country... By drawing pictures in sand.
She was SO. Very. Good.
Then we entered in another room, where they tied in to the food theme of Expo this year (technically "We feed the World", I believe? Food, anyway), by telling how Kazakhstan was the bread-maker of the world, showing soils and stuff, then giving free samples of horse milk. My classmates didn't love it, but I liked it, probs because I do originate from a country where food has strong flavors and horse milk is... Very particular and definitely with a striking taste. Oh also, there were moving pictures that welcomed us by saying "welcome, honored guest" or the likes of it, which actually cracked me up big time.
But then! Then came the main attraction, because interesting or not I couldn't possibly understand what was so great about this pavilion to deserve a technically-three-hours-queue. And the main attraction was a 4D show. I had to sit in front row, which had both nice and bad sides, bad because I was forced to constantly crane my neck at uncomfortable angles to look at everything, nice because the things were amazingly close. I quickly gave up on acting mature and tried to catch all the birds and pet the horses and get the apples, giggling like an idiot when the movement of the seats replicated perfectly how one would move in the screen, and gaping in awe at the beautiful tour I took of the country.
Basically I was a child, but I take consolation in the fact that I was not the only one xD
Yeah, so that pavilion was definitely worth the wait.
We then decided to wait for Germany. First off, there were two hours something to queue, and this time it was right. Plus the line was... Cramped and boring, like all other lines actually. Kazakhstan was the only line that was entertaining. Once we were in they gave us these SeedPad (I think that's what they are called?) things. They are basically pieces of cardboard, with paper on them to make them white and some shiny circles. First off, we were welcomed by some screens with different people on them eating, but after a while one threw an apple... And another person caught it, so the screens started interacting by throwing food at each other and sharing it.
See that word there? "Interacting". Remember it, Germany was all about it.
We were shown how to use the SeedPad and then guided to the next rooms, which is basically all of the remaining pavilion. What you do in the Germany pavilion? You interact.
By putting the SeedPad on different surfaces, anything from special tables to maps to giant fruit replicae, there will be a projected explanation on something, which most of the time you can also interact with by selecting "chapters", exploring the map, or something else. It was very nice, but it would require patience and at leeaaast an hour to explore it all, and the girl I was going around with was not that patient, too bad. But we were shown projects initiated by those people in the initial videos, everything from conserving apples, to two kids planning to plant 10.000 trees, to someone trying to create an environment where fish and tomatoes support each other. Also, we were very very mature and took pics of ourselves in fruit costumes (like, those things where you put your head in a drawing?) and colored a tomato on the children's wall. We had to, okay.
Then there was that final show. Ah that final show.
First music started playing, then two guys came out, one playing, one singing. They're our animators. One is tall, blond, incredibly thin, for some reason wearing nothing but a T-shirt and shorts even though it's October, the other is at least wearing jeans, short, dark hair, kinda pudgy, basically they are opposites.
So they start this routine. After the song, they make us make animal sounds (I was a sheep... Hehe), and these are in turn used to create more music. Then the animal-music stops and they start speaking to us and each other in quick German, which prompted most of the public, me and tour-mate included, to go "whaaaat is happening here?", until they switch to Italian ([german word]? What [german word] and [german word once again]! Ra-va-nel-li!" "Oh... I'm sorry, did you not understand?"). Then more music, and basically yeah, it was all very silly and fun, but they reminded us to "Be active!" in the end, and that was fridge brilliance, because you had to be active to visit the Germany pavilion, you had to do stuff, not just watch, and everything we were shown was actual projects being active, not something being planned.
Pretty neat pavilion, that.
Then we decided to go to a cluster, not because we wanted to, but because the teachers wanted us to... Ah well, we visited the biomediterran cluster, and in it was Albania so I practically forced my classmate to go in with me.
It sucked so much xD
No really, it was terrible, there was like, one video. That was all. But then again most cluster-nations didn't look like they had much to offer. Also the lady welcoming guests and stamping passports (it's an Expo thing, since you're visiting the world you can have fake stamps of fake passports) was so rude, when she saw that a client couldn't speak Italian, nor English, she started complaining in one of those languages knowing that they couldn't understand what she was saying exactly (even though the tone was pretty eloquent), and that is not something you do with guests, okay? Also, rude, at least greet back, you didn't when I said hi, nor when I said goodbye.
Uhm, then we joined with two other classmates because technically we had to walk around with them. Ugh. Why. Stupid and noisy and immature... Argh. Seriously, you ruined at least one nice pavilion for me.
First thing we saw all together was USA.
Sorry, USA. You fail. You fail big time.
First off, there is a water show where drops fall and form words. Problem? US is juuuust aside Qatar, which had the same thing, but done well. The water show in Qatar was readable, and it welcomed guests to the pavilion. The water show in the US was hidden, and the words were unreadable because they didn't bother to put an uniform background. Then the actual pavilion? Even more of a failure. There was... One restaurant.
What.
The.
Heck.
Well, a few vids of people speaking but in their language, so normally most didn't understand a thing, also because they were all speaking together, which is terrible. I heard there were shows at certain times, but if it's your only actual attraction, certain times is not enough, I didn't see anything.
Sorry US, really, but you fail epically.
Ahem. Anyway. Next up Turkmenistan and that is aesthetically beauuuutiful, it is really, really pretty, with gigantic persian rugs on the walls, and a neat building, and traditional costumes and stuff... But there was nothing to do at all, and I didn't come there to see a museum.
Last up, we wanted to do Austria but there was too much queue, so we went to Azerbaijan instead. I got unnerved at classmates but the pavilion itself was really cute. The walls are completely decorated with a music theme, there are instruments that play themselves, a very nice and comfy interior, complete with floor that changes color, and upstairs there are two floors. The first has these fields of tulips (I thiiiiiink), and from there the floor downstairs is actually revealed to be a map of Azerbaijan that changes colors and sometimes lights up because it's the "Land of fire". But the probably-tulips! There are fields of these colored tulips, and if you wave your hand over them they whistle and it's lovely and so cute, and all colored, and there is this thing with lotsa wood coming down the ceiling and videos of people which are short enough to be interesting (just people doing their job, rabbis, sculptors, farmers, etc.), while upstairs the wood is revealed to be containers for trees, lots of little trees, and the rest of the floor is completely dedicated to food, mmhm. There are these tablets where you can see all the products and how they are made and/or used in cooking.
Also a nice pavilion.
There were lots I wanted to visit, but didn't have the time to (Japan... Six hours in line... No thank you very much) or the girl travelling with me had already seen it/thought it would be boring (Korea, Spain, Romania, Vietnam, China, Brasil... Pretty much this is the reason I didn't visit most places).
TL;DR, nice day, lots of queue, visited a few countries without ever leaving Italy, didn't get those awesome hats that were in the Vietnam pavilion even though I reaaaally liked them, one day was definitely not enough, classmates are annoying, Kazakhstan shows off a lot, Germany likes its vegetables, USA fails at Expo, Azerbaijan loves music, Japan is too popular for me to visit, my country also fails at Expo.
TL;DR once again: nice, tiring, lots of difference between awesomeness levels.
