Tell Mom I Ain't Comin' Home
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oving through these vast halls, even at peak pedestrian gridlock time, a visitor cannot help but admire the organization and planning that goes into CeBIT. Everything works in here, even the cell phones, and no sooner does someone drop a piece of trash then somebody else picks it up. But woe to the innocent who tries to leave just at dark, a little after six, when like clockwork, everyone else tries to leave at the same moment and this biggest of modern trade shows descends into a Fellini fantasy of hopelessness.
There are 50,000 parking places immediately adjacent to the exhibition halls, all of them emptying at once. Armies of buses and shuttles and delivery trucks try to make their way through the dense ranks of hundreds of thousands of pedestrians who are crossing the endless grounds, looking for any kind of transportation.
This slow-moving frenzy reaches insane proportions at the exits, where everyone, wheeled or afoot, must pass through the narrow gates manned by irritable policemen. Nobody knows where they're going. Cab drivers have come from other countries for a piece of the business here this week, but they have no idea where Kommandanturstrasse might be. Footsore visitors refuse to honor the taxi lines, leaping forward to grab door handles as the cabs run the human gauntlet along the curb.
There are something over 600,000 people here this week. They are expecting 40 million visitors for Expo 2000 in a couple of years. They have got to figure out the transportation. Somebody might get mad. Or go mad.
-- Janice Castro
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