I have been maintaining a habit of reading about a place before travelling there. Mostly, it's either short story books telling about the cultural lore or history of the place.
Recently, I visited Budapest and read a book with the same name by Victor Sebestyen.
One critical topic stood out: "Budapest, the city, was rebuilt significantly in the two decades leading up to 1896 for a World Exhibition marking 1000 years of the country."
It was not a proper world fair, but we can call it so.
Since then, the same question has been running through my mind: what happened to world fairs, and why don't we have more of these?
Operationally, it gives me chills to imagine a "concert/festival" [in today's terminology] of such scale being pulled off across months.
> what happened to world fairs, and why don't we have more of these?
We do, just not every year. [0]
Expo 2000 in Hannover, Germany, was a very big deal. The tram/metro/bus system of this 500k pop city was significantly improved. Infrastructure was modernized.
At the exhibition you could visit very creative pavilions that tried to capture something like a national spirit (or whatever the national committee wanted to represent as such). Switzerland and Japan were my favourites. [1] The former fair grounds and some structures built specifically for Expo 2000 are still being used today for events [2].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_fair#World_Expos_2
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_2000#Pavilions and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_2000#Gallery
[2]: https://expowal-hannover.de/
People had to travel for many days or weeks to go. Cross oceans. Take wagons. No planes. Chocolate was a big deal back then. People weren't nearly as jaded. Now they should be. I used to think about things like that a lot. The 1893 World's Fair, I mean. The 1880s through the 1920s must have been something else.
It would have been a fascinating time to be alive, even with all the hardships and diseases. Hard as hell though.
Thank god time travel does not exist. I would hate to think of the idea of anyone being able to go back.
Prohibition also seemed like an interesting time to be alive. Not so much the Prohibition part, just the general other things going on on the planet at the time.
This is very interesting considering how much of Budapest was rebuilt or at least restored again most recently in the last couple of decades. It's absolutely incredible how far it has come from the 90s
Recently, I visited Budapest and read a book with the same name by Victor Sebestyen.
One critical topic stood out: "Budapest, the city, was rebuilt significantly in the two decades leading up to 1896 for a World Exhibition marking 1000 years of the country."
It was not a proper world fair, but we can call it so.
Since then, the same question has been running through my mind: what happened to world fairs, and why don't we have more of these?
Operationally, it gives me chills to imagine a "concert/festival" [in today's terminology] of such scale being pulled off across months.
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