[Culturechat] Swiss Expo 2002

[Vance Roy]

Some of you know about the Swiss Expo 2002 being held from may until 
October this year. Yesterday, my Godson's class sang there, in what is a 
three day appearance, and I was happy to be able to see some of this 
exposition.

We loaded into a really nice travel bus with about fifty other 
interested people from Sachseln at 6 AM for the three hour drive to 
Yverdon des Bains in French CH. The Expo is being held at four sites; 
Yverdon, Biel, Murten, Neuenburg (Neuchatel), plus a floating exhibit on 
the Three Lakes Region of the Lakes of Biel, Neuchatel, and Murten. It 
is possible to visit each site by means of motorized catamaran passenger 
ships on Lake Neuchatel. This would not be wise to try in one day, but 
we were able to travel between the sites at Yverdon and Neuchatel with 
sights at both places seen.

Expo is hard for me to describe. It is not comparable to anything that I 
have seen. There are exhibits of superb technological complexity mixed 
with simpler and almost rustic sites. At Yverdon, there are nine 
different exhibitions. Since we arrived there first, we began our 
investigations there. After a walk through some ever changing hills of 
geraniums and lavender, we found "The Cloud". This is the most 
spectacular looking exhibit in Yverdon. We purchased rain ponchos, put 
the glasses away, and stepped into a cloud. There are thousands of 
miniature nozzles spraying a fine mist over this three tiered structure 
that sits out over the lake's edge. this makes it appear as a cloud 
floating on the surface of the water. It was not a really hot day, but I 
can imagine this would be the best place to be if it were really warm. 
Other sites that we found interesting were an exhibit on pain with a 
trip through a rendition of the nerve fibers in one's body while 
listening to descriptions of somatic pain by patients,  a warm and 
humorous tale of love between two people in a place called "Swiss Love", 
a wonderful, almost out of body experience in "Wer bin Ich?" (Who am I?) 
which is a personal favorite of mine and was revisited by more than one 
of us. By far and away, the most educational exhibit here is "The Garden 
of Eden". Most of this is a work of Roche pharmaceuticals and is a slick 
and professionally run exhibit of genetic theory, practicality, and 
great multimedia interactive health education. There is a great deal 
more, but these are the high spots of Yverdon's presentations.

For 20 CHF each way, we bought tickets on a slick motor catamaran for 
the 40+ minute ride to and from Neuchatel's Expo exhibit. This turned 
out to be a treat also. To me, the exhibits called the "Kieselsteine 
(Polished Rocks) was the best, but we did not have enough time there for 
us to see it all. The Rocks consists of seven different exhibits on an 
elevated huge platform over the lake surrounded by hundreds of thin rods 
each topped by a light and waving in the lake waves. There is a 
spectacular night time light show there, I hear. Because of the kids 
performance, we had to cut this visit short and return to Yverdon, but I 
think it could be another day's visit.

As expected, there are lines in which one must wait. None of these waits 
was over 15 minutes, and the crowd management is at least as good as a 
Disney theme park (which I think is awfully good). We had fun speaking 
to the numerous school children anxious to practice their English on us. 
Throughout the areas, there are many personnel seeming to anticipate 
your questions, help with explanations in any language, and in general, 
keep things on an even keel. Of course, there are many restaurants from 
sit down with table service to stand up eateries. The variety of foods 
is abundant, and the prices are reasonable by CH standards. Public WCs 
are almost ubiquitous and the usual operating room standards of 
cleanliness apply here, as else where in CH. CHF and Euros, as well as 
credit cards are accepted. A ticket gets you a wrist band with admission 
to all sites of the Expo. There are few extras for which you must pay. 
There seemed to be little or no souvenir hawking. I expect if you are 
searching for a ball cap or a tee shirt, you will have to hunt a bit.

I will admit to misgivings about Expo before I saw it. I think now, that 
it will be hard to make this be a paying operation, but I expect all who 
visit will want to return to see more. So far, the visitor projections 
are ahead of those needed to break even. I think that I do want to see 
more.

Vance Roy
gigli.saw@dplanet.ch