The Eurovision Song Contest is well-known enough in Oz I would say; the winner usually makes the newspaper (or the website these days), pubs often play it and everyone makes fun of it. There was even that live stage show spoof "Eurobeat". So understandably I was pretty excited to experience a Eurovision IN Europe! I was surprised though to discover that many Europeans aren't actually 'that in to it' (for example, Eurovision, not so big in Italy as it turns out). And I was equally surprised at the amount of blank stares I received when talking about it in front of Americans and Canadians...
Regardless, that didn't stop me from getting completely into it and dragging anyone I could convince along for the ride. The original plan was to get tickets to this year's show, given it was held a 2-hour train ride over the border in the German city of Dusseldorf. Buuuut, we missed out on tickets on line. Plan B was to go over by train anyway, pull an all-nighter and watch it on a big screen outdoors. Buuuuut then I got horrendously sick and was not in ANY shape to be crossing state borders! So, plan C ended up being a party in the Scottish (guesthouse) household of Katie and Kathleen watching the BBC broadcast of the show.
After drawing country names out of a hat (I drew Switzerland and Austria) we got out the face paint (to paint flags on our faces) and other attempts at last minute nationalistic costumes and then settled down to the real business of the night - figuring out the rules of the Eurovision drinking game! We ended up going with the Webtender.com version (http://www.webtender.com/handbook/games/eurovision-song-contest.game) which basically invoved drinking any time we saw a performer wearing a hat, fireworks going off, singers winking at the camera, any use of props, key changes etc etc you get the picture ... basically we were pretty busy :P
SWITZERLAND!
Getting into the spirit!
The tense Brits (and an Italian in the middle at the back) watching the votes being counted
Highlights of the show included the hottie Greek/Russian/Swedish male performers, the hilarity of twins with mohawks and "dice" shoulder pads, lots of "ethnic" dancing and instruments, the token metal/rock band and lots of shoop-shooping back up dancers. My money was on Moldova from the start (mostly because of their country name but they also had awesome cone-head style hats!) but as you all may have heard, Azerbijan won - with a classic mix of treacley catchy love song, all white outfits, hair extensions and long looooonnngggg looks into each others eyes. Needless to say Switzerland and Austria did not do so well, but I was loyal to the end! On the upside, the Brits hosting the party were stoked the UK got on the board voting-wise and did half-decently with their washed-up pop band entry! It was also interesting to see how political the voting was. Neighbours voting for neighbours, former Soviet blocs sticking together and the SHOCK HORROR of Ireland snubbing the UK after the UK gave Ireland top votes! None of it made much sense to me but it was all quite sensational according to the Europeans :P
I was bummed we couldn't see it live, or at least soak up the atmosphere in the same city, but just being in Europe made it all the more interesting and it will be even funnier to watch it back home. Or I hear Azerbijan is nice that time of year.....?
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