The world comes to a global city
I am in Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates, attending Expo2020. In good company, the Expo was postponed by a year but is still called Dubai Expo2020 (because that’s a year we all want to be reminded of, I guess). I don’t know if the delay helped or hurt but I can say that the Emiratis have given the world quite a show. I have been walking miles each day (it has been in the 70’s) since arriving. I stroll with a big smile on my face. I’ve never encountered so many people from so many nations who, at the tail end of Expo2020, are happy to be sharing their nation’s history and aspirations, or learning about another, with so many. The Expo2020 staff were excellent. Kind, attentive, warm, informed, and plentiful. It is the people more than the pavilions that made Expo 2020 an extraordinary experience.
Expo2020 is organized along three major themes — Mobility, Sustainability, and Opportunity — under the general slogan of “Connecting Minds, Creating the Future.” Each has its own district and its share of the 192 nations represented along with some organizations and corporations, most of them based in the Gulf, spread over 1000 beautifully maintained acres. (You could fit New York’s Central Park inside.)
It’s a delight to walk this city in the city that is Dubai. (Eighty percent of the infrastructure will be repackaged as the mixed-use community, “District 2020″ after Expo concludes in March.) It is packed with major exhibitions such as the UAE’s stunning building which recalls not one but two national icons, the falcon — the building has 28 movable wings — and the pearl. Campus Germany (with its 90-minute queue), the Saudi Arabia Pavillon (second largest), Korea’s spinning cubes, and Singapore’s city garden all attract a lot of attention. I have also enjoyed the smaller shared pavilions like those of Mozambique, Costa Rica, Uganda, and other nations not electing to invest millions in a six-month project.
Each nation is located in one of the thematic districts or in one of the contiguous entertainment parks. Of the thematic pavilions, Mobility provides the best experience. Here mobility is defined in terms of transportation, communication, and computation. Sustainability has the most dramatic home, a solar well — a huge solar array. Opportunity tries hard but seemed a bit preachy.
Expo2020 closes on March 31, 2022.
Getting there was easy on the Dubai Metro. It is driver-less and I rarely gave that a thought. I bought a gold card and had comfortable seat with armrests and a tray table.
The world exposition movement has an interesting history. You can learn more about it here.
I stayed at MENA Plaza Hotel, near the Mall of the Emirates. (This where Ski Dubai is located and seemed quite busy.) Mena staff were great. After 18 days as a guest, they charged me for a broken water glass, calling it “damage.” It is a good reminder that Dubai seeks to please you, amuse you, and separate you from your money.
Burj Khalifa’s “At the Top”, isn’t at the top of the world’s tallest tower, but it still has a nice view. Freedom Tower in New York is a superior experience, as is the Tokyo Tower. But like me, you will spend $80.00 to view a haphazard skyline with hundreds taking selfies from a crowded and poorly decorate viewing platform. (There is a 141 floor with presumably has a better experience for the price.)
The new Museum of the Future calls itself the most beautiful building in the world. Fortunately, that is not true. It is one of the most interesting structures, I’ll give it that. Its programming needs to catch up but it is brand new, so we will see what the future holds.
Every encounter with a Dubai resident (only 15-20% are Emiratis) made me feel like some honoree. The respect shown to grey-haired guests like me was palpable. I rarely asked for help because it was volunteered first.
My total on-location spending from February 19 to March 9, 2022 to was $2,235.00 or $117per day.
$1,447 or 65%of that went to my accommodations (hotels). I spent $ 366 on food and beverage for 16% of my total costs. What is labeled “Enjoy” (entertainment, tours, admissions, etc.) was my third-highest category at $268 or 12%. Local transport totaled $150 (7%).
(Note, I don’t include airfares since they can vary so much.)
I use the app TravelSpend to record all of my expenses. Having a budget for your trip is important if you want to manage your spending.
You can see all of my spending here:
My itinerary. I spent the vast majority of my time at Expo, visiting a few dozen pavilions. My Tripit itinerary may be viewed here:
Nations as Influencers
The Netherlands did a great job in demonstrating sustainability in its pavilion which is self-sufficient. It somehow collects water from the desert air and it grows greens and mushrooms in the exhibit hall. It also does something very clever with umbrellas. There was also a wooden bicycle.
Kazhakstan gives you a nice hosted introduction to a county that no one knows anything about. They also have a performance (as does Korea), that looks toward the future. It was nice to focus on a person, not a screen, for once. and Kazhakstan allows you to do that. It is in my top three.
I liked Austria very much. It provided a unique sensory experience in an interesting building. Pakistan made me want to visit for its natural beauty and religious sites. Surprisingly, Russia’s pavillions offered some very interesting brain science. It was an intelligent exhibit and I wondered if Putin has seen it. I wanted to hate it but there was no propaganda, only some very well presented neuroscience and interesting cross-species comparisons. The bedazzling presentation there ends with a pean to cooperation. I wanted to spit.
The USA Pavilion could have learned from it. If Russia impressed me, the US disappointed. There was a lot of talk about AI. I guess the organizers thought visitors didn’t know that the US is doing a lot with technology. The biggest disappointment was China. Walking through its pavilion was like a walk-through of a 3D prospectus for an investor. I was completely bored. China has a remarkable culture. You would never know it from Expo2020. I had that awkward feeling one gets when a host is showing you around his home and you get a catalog of possessions. It felt as if China had no citizens, only customers. At least the USA gave attention to its national parks. (I am happy to report that it seemed to me that if a country has national parks they almost always were featured in their pavilions.)
China’s presentation was not alone in appearing to have been produced by an army of marketers. In pavilion after pavilion nations were presented as corporations, with little heart. As a great lover of museums, I was hoping for a more didactic experience. Spain does a great job at providing cultural and historical context with its exhibit on exploration. The program ends with a short film that was amusing enough and I guess was filmed in Spain but wasn’t focused on Spain that I could tell. And maybe that was the point. Maybe the point is to show how the world is coming together since we are all alike. (As in we all stare at our phones and let children misbehave in public.)
Finding Heart
Screens are dominant at Expo2020. Every pavilion gives you something to watch. Or I should say record. (There was a certain absurdity of thousands of people watching a screen through a screen. I think 100% of the presentations I saw were recorded by thousands of visitors.) Several pavilions offer short films, often in an immersive style. They have all been high quality and short. (There is no strain on one’s attention span here.) After a while, Expo2020 started to feel like a series of giant Instagram reels with national flags and anthems. Or maybe the way to think of some exhibitions is like one great big national selfie. I am not sure this is the format to learn about complicated societies and intricate cultures. Some say that Expos are the Olympics of technology and industry. Adding marketing to that list would make good sense from what I’ve seen.
My relief from this Instagram-TikTok-Facebook inflected experience and to humanize my experience was to chat up as many of the staff as I could (as well as other visitors). I had great conversations with Brazilians, Czechs, Philipinos, Spaniards, Zambians, Egyptians, Ugandans, and more. These chats have been a highlight. And even when I am not engaged one-on-one, the sweep of humanity at Expo, the crowds of people from all over the world, with Africans, Asians, and Arabs, in robes, headdress, and braids, well-represented, made me feel that I was someplace I had never been. This was true factually but more importantly, it was true for me emotionally. I had a remarkable experience.
The emotional highlight was my visit to the Ukraine Pavilion on my last day. The exhibition itself was solid — although all tech-forward. It has four floors and is filled with sunlight. You can see Russia from it. Zelenskiy is there In life-sized roll-up posters that pleas “Stand with Ukraine.” Unforeseeable at the start of the Expo, are the pleas for peace from Visitors from all over the world have left messages of peace and encouragement for Ukraine. They cover the walls and staircases. They are written in a dozen languages. A group sat at a table writing more. The Ukrainians seemed both grateful as they stamped the Expo passports of visitors while inevitably thinking of their compatriots passing the borders of Poland, Rumania, and Moldavia. This was a crowd-sourced, low-tech, high-touch exhibit. A black sharpie making an indelible impression on a 3M sticky of a thought, a hope. a plea, a cry of the heart. This was the best exhibition at Dubai Expo2020.
Perhaps despite its emphasis on mobility, sustainability, and opportunity, and the marketing and tech-forward nature of the exhibitions, the real focus of the national pavilions and the whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-the parts-nature of it all was not AI, VR, or some other new patented way of manipulating zeros and ones. I think the psychology of the nations was the point. Maybe like millions of its citizens, nations have FOMO too (“fear of missing out”). They don’t want to miss out — or seem to be missing out — on the latest new thing in tech. So while these pavilions became 3D commercials mostly for the engines of commerce in the counties in question there was more there too.
I guess I loved Expo in spite of the branding. I get it. Who among us doesn’t want to look our happiest, most successful, and most confident self? Is it a surprise that nations want this as well?