Oblification!

Fast and slow food at the World Exhibition in Milan

Gypsum ducks, pigs and sheep reproachfully look at people in the main pavilion of the 2015 World Exhibition. A few days ago, the defenders of animal rights set fire to cars and threw stones into the windows in the center of Milan. Activists who arranged a demonstration on the opening day of the exhibition demanded to send anthropocentrism to a landfill of history and grant animals the right to decide whether they want to be eaten. 10 days passed, and that the World Exhibition has many enemies, the tourist will remind only the inscriptions of No Expo on the walls. The graffiti of anti -globalists are almost not noticeable, but thousands of advertising posters are lured to the exhibition. Hearing from the call, gluttons and drinks rushed to Milan. Only 20 minutes by train, and here it is: the city in the city, which opened on May 1, the largest restaurant on planet Earth is “EXPO-2015”, dedicated to food.

I would not dare to invite to this restaurant (more precisely, dozens of establishments working on the territory of EXPO) of picky gourmets. Although culinary art is demonstrated by cooks from Kyoto, Moscow and Paris, you can feed millions of visitors to the exhibition only in fast food mode. It’s not gastronomes that compete, but designers, and the best pastime for gluing is a walk along the pavilions on an empty stomach. And you can have lunch in Milan.

The study of "EXPO-2015" is most reasonable to start with a huge Italian pavilion. Its developers and builders are accused of corruption, the arrangement was spent almost 20 million euros more than the planned amount, but the pavilion is really good. The beauty of Italy is refracted in mirror labyrinths; Palaces, mountains and rivers melt in endless reflections, and the crowd takes the visitor to the picture of Renato Guttuzo, similar to the icon, installed to scare away the left activists who hate the bourgeois exhibition. If you do not like the Bolshevik Guttuzo, rush to the Vatican pavilion, where the “Secret Office ” hangs “Tintoretto brought from Venice: the Lord says that it will be devoted, the apostles are shocked, the chair is turned upside down, Judah does not have a halo. In the summer, the picture will be taken away, and its place will take Rubens tapest for the cycle "Triumph of the Eucharist".

Next to the Central Italian pavilion, a dozen small, regional. Do not miss the tasting hall of the Wine of Italy: and if you are a militant teetotaler, just striking for hundreds of bottles, bottles and bottles in order to know the enemy in the face.

New art is represented in the pavilions of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The famous Charakterkopfe , skewed by the hallucinations of sculptor Franz Messerschmidt (1736-1783) are now increased ten times and swim in a cramped pool near the entrance to the Slovak pavilion. Inside are mannequins painted by the artist Alexei Mlynarchik. This has nothing to do with food, but beautiful. In the Prague Center for Contemporary Art, DOX is now exhibited by the sculptures of Lukash Rittstein, uniting birds and cars, and the largest poultry meter, besides turning into a fountain, stands in Milan at the entrance to the Czech Republic pavilion.

The best Pavilion "EXPO", for my taste, British. Designer Wolfgang Battress prudently placed a bar in his hive over the field of flowering daisies: in the bee house you certainly need to drink ale. The Austrian pavilion is turned into a forest. “Inhale Austria,” neon letters suggest hidden among trees. Breath turns into EAT, so that Austria can not only inhale, but also eat.

The ideologists of the Russian pavilion decided to follow the simplest path, calling everything that is edible in Russia. The visitor will find out about most dishes, if you are able to read the inscriptions on the ceiling and walls (along with sauerkraut and buckwheat porridge, strangers to me, the Schongorys and Uzvar are mentioned), and in the pavilion itself you can break borsch or pancakes in the restaurant car: the endless expanses of Russia are drawn outside the windows. The waiters assure that the cook of the notorious Moscow restaurant Pushkin leads the kitchen, but it is difficult to believe in it: it is really prepared as a long -distance train. In the main hall of the pavilion there is a huge glass structure similar to the moonshine; Everything is highlighted by purple-pink-lilac, as if in psychedelic science fiction, and the bartender offers a drink or fruit drink, though not from this apparatus, but from bottles.

There is no Ukrainian pavilion at the exhibition at all. After the revolution, the decision to participate in EXPO was canceled along with other ventures of the times of Yanukovych. Sorry: the architectural project makes an impression. The Belarusian pavilion looks great: a huge wheel spin, cutting a hill. But it is better not to go inside: there is a post -Soviet despondency and Belarusian wines.

The two most funny pavilions are Zambia and Turkmenistan. In Zambia, small shelves: on the upper one - the portrait of the president of his Excellency of Mr. Edgar Chagva Lunga, and under it are sad jars of jam and bottles with lemonade. In the Turkmen portraits of Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, there are so many, as if Turkmen eat only images of the leader. Is there Berdymuhamedov on a horse (not on the one with whom he fell?), Berdymuhamedov with Valentina Matvienko, the giant Berdymuhamedov, who was walking into the future, and, finally, the composition of Berdimuhamedov's “Unquenchable Svetoch in the Council of the Soul” in three languages in a white binding with golden embossing. The rest of the exposition is an exquisitely accurate reproduction of the assortment of the Duty-Fri store of the Ashgabad airport. Perhaps the Pavilion was preparing a Turkmen hooligan conceptualist?

Opponents of the harmony of fast food and the achievements of the national economy settled in the Slow Food pavilion. Dissants believe that a catastrophic disappearance of species occurs, comparable to what happened 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs died out. Only now are not external forces guilty, but people who destroy biodiversity. Forests are cut down, animals, plants, mushrooms, bacteria - 27,000 species per year, 3 hourly, 3 hourly. Over the past 70 years, two -thirds of agricultural biodiversity have been destroyed, created by farmers in 10,000 years, peasant farms turn into terrible plants for the production of bad food. Fertilizers are destroyed by the ground, industrial fishing destroys the seas. Slowfudists are sure that they can feed the whole world differently-using local products grown without harmful chemistry. They advise eating less meat and shrimp and carefully read the labels, choosing not for distant lands, but next to the house. They find disappearing products, help their revival and promotion to the world market. They advertise rare wines produced on small vineyards. Saying goodbye to EXPO-2015, I drank a glass in the Sloudfudov pavilion next to the statue of an unknown idol made of corn grains. I testify: the wine is excellent. The slush for no doubt is better than fast food, but in order to draw such a conclusion, it is not necessary to rush to Milan.