The organisers and the government had reckoned on a 400m mark deficit but losses are weighing in at six times that. Every man, woman and child in Germany will be 30 marks out of pocket as a result of a project designed to sell the spirit of German entrepreneurship and creativity. In light of that, corporate America’s refusal to sponsor a US pavilion now seems a shrewd business decision.But, thanks to the last-minute rush, attendance figures at the Expo, which opened on 1 June, are better than had been feared. Numbers picked up when prices were cut; schools marched classes in and sponsors gave staff a day off so long as they took a train Hanover.The efforts paid off: attendance numbers are heading for 18 million, among the lowest at a world exhibition in past decades but better than Lisbon’s 10 million figure two years ago. Under these circumstances, it would be churlish to ask how many of Expo’s guests bought their tickets at full price. Such figures are not available, in any case.The organisers will now happily admit that their original projections of 40 million had been an elaborate con trick.

Hanover, capital of the Land of Lower Saxony, was desperate for federal funds to improve its infrastructure, and simply cooked the books.Roland Berger, a management consultant advising the Expo, yesterday said he told the regional government to expect no more than 26 million visitors and a deficit of at least 1.6bn marks. Among those warned about the looming disaster was Gerhard Schröder, then the regional Prime Minister, and now federal Chancellor. He has generously stumped up federal taxpayers’ money to bail out his bankrupt home town.When Expo closes its gates,a political dispute over the white elephant is certain to erupt. More importantly, as in the case of the Dome, in Greenwich, south-east London, the fiasco did nothing to improve the image of the organising country.

This is the first – and no doubt last – world expo staged by Germany.The host nation had set out to dispel clichés and present itself as an unbuttoned kind of people forever in search of fun But the show was dull, dull, dull. And the only local dignitary conforming to the revised stereotype was Prinz Ernst August, a distant relation of the Queen, caught in a photograph urinating against the Turkish pavilion He had consumed too much champagne, he later admitted.. Visitors to one of Britain’s best-known beauty spots have been astonished to encounter a large, wet hole in the ground, excavated with the help of £15,000 of National Lottery funding, to enable them to examine the roots of a living tree. Visitors to one of Britain’s best-known beauty spots have been astonished to encounter a large, wet hole in the ground, excavated with the help of £15,000 of National Lottery funding, to enable them to examine the roots of a living tree.
Their surprise has been compounded by the fact that the timber-lined 2.5-metre deep tunnel, which is open for less than a month, is being hailed as a major work of art.Hundreds of walkers have so far stumbled upon the discreetly sited hole near the village of Brockenhurst in the heart of the New Forest.Described as a piece of “site-specific installation art”, the tunnel is the brainchild of the Macedonian-born sculptor Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva, who has received the money for the project from the Arts Council as part of the millennium Year of the Artist programme.”The idea is for people to go down the hole and look at the roots of the tree,” said 29-year-old Hadzi-Vasileva as she emerged from the tunnel yesterday. “I am trying to provide an opportunity for people to look at nature from a different perspective.”It has been dug in the sandy soil beneath a 25-metre high western hemlock conifer with permission from the Forestry Commission..