"Winning is not enough, we must crush them!"
-Kate Allen
Last night was the Eurovision Song Contest Final. For those of you who do not know what Eurovision is an annual singing competition between the countries of Europe. Each member country submits one song that is performed live and then people can call in to vote. The contest was started in 1956 and has been broadcast every year since. 39 countries participated this year. There were two semi-finals, and then 26 countries performed in the final. Eurovision has some very weird rules. I found out that performers do not have to have citizenship of the country they are performing for, which just seems kind of weird. Canadian, Celine Dion, competed and won for Switzerland in 1988. From 1966 to 1972 and again from 1978 until 1998 songs were required to be performed in the national language. Since 1998 songs can be sung in any language and I mean any language, again weird. You would think this would mean that most songs would be sung in English and a lot of the time they are but there are also some very weird language choices. For example: 1990 and 2012 Finland sang in Swedish; 2003, 2006, and 2008 Belgium and the Netherlands entered songs sung in made-up languages; 2006 Monaco sang in Tahitian; 2010 Norway sang in Swahili.
But of course before spending the night cheering on Denmark, we had to eat. This Chinese Buffet is right across the street from where two of my friends from last semester, Alex and Lucy, lived. Every time we went to their place we talked about eating at this restaurant and we finally did. I think it is a good thing that I did not go here previously in the year, I probably would have spent a ton of money coming here and getting take-out. This restaurant is almost up to the greasy standards of American Chinese Buffets, almost but not quite.
And then after I was happy and full, Ashley and Kate informed me that we were going to look at cars before Eurovision. Now I can look at a car and say it's pretty but other than that I don't know anything about cars and I really could care less. However Kate and Ashley were in heaven and would squeal at every car we saw. I of course just rolled my eyes and kept walking.
The cars were here for the Gumball 3000 which is an annual British 3,000 mile international road rally. I just read the wikipedia page for this race and apparently this isn't actually a "race", there is not winner instead it is supposed to be seen as more of a "road trip adventure". See that makes this seem even more pointless to me.
Apparently this year is the 15th anniversary race. Entrants include David Hasselhoff, Prince Talal M.A. Al-Faisal Al-Saud of the Saudi Arabian royal Family, Eve, and Tony Hawk. There are a lot more participants those are just the ones I recognize.
Also I would like to point out that I was promised that the Batmobile, from the Christian Bale movies, would be here. It however was hidden until the next morning when the cars set off. I however was not getting up before 10:00 AM to go out in the rain to see a bunch of cars drive off.
Now I know that the U.S. Navy and Army sponsors Nascar cars so this isn't super weird to see the German Coast Guard sponsor a car. However whenever I see a branch of any countries military sponsoring a race car I just think that there has got to be more important things to spend the defense budget on.
Again I know that these doors are supposed to be super cool and fancy but I just imagine that you would have someone park next to you and you wouldn't be able to get in your car because you couldn't open the doors.
And then we were ready for Eurovision!
We went to the Town Hall Square where a big screen was set up. This year the contest was held in Malmo, Sweden; which is just across the bridge from Copenhagen.
Coke has started a new campaign called, "Share a Coke", which means that they have replaced the Coke logo with the most popular names of the country. Which basically means that every time I buy a coke I look for the most stereotypical Danish name ever. I think I succeeded here, you can't get much more Danish than Rasmus.
It was awesome how many people dressed up or brought flags to show who they were supporting.
I am not really sure why there were Welsh flags, seeing as Wales is not an independent nation.
The contest began very much like the Olympics does, with a parade of nations and an anthem.
The theme this year was "We are One" and the symbol was a butterfly. The opening video actually had a caterpillar traveling from Azerbaijan, which was where the contest was last year, across Europe to Sweden. The butterfly symbol was used throughout the contest. Whenever a new country was announced a butterfly with that country's flag showed on the screen.
There was an overwhelming amount of Germans and Brits showing their support.
And a surprising group of Lithuanians.
Germany's performer was Cascada, who was really famous about 10 years ago for her song, "Every time We Touch".
This was the performer from Armenia. I don't actually remember anything about his song because I could only look at his crazy eyebrows, there was no looking away.
The British entry was Bonnie Tyler of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" fame.
Denmark's entry was Emilie de Forest who sang "Only Teardrops".
The song contest is actually very political and voting not exactly fair. You can also tell that a lot of countries enter because they want to participate but they don't actually want to win, because winning means hosting next years competition, which also means you have to pay for the next years competition. Take Greece for example, they participated with a song titled, "Alcohol is Free", and they were dressed in kilts, not exactly trying hard to win.
And then there was the singing doctor from Malta who just seemed super happy to be there. And really he is a full fledged medical doctor and just sings on the side.
One of the coolest performances was by Azerbaijan. I know what you are thinking Azerbaijan is not in Europe or I didn't know Azerbaijan was a country. Apparently anyone in the European Broadcasting Union can enter the contest. So countries such as Israel, Morocco, and Georgia have participated. Azerbaijan's performance this year was so cool because the performer had a shadow in a box and it was awesome!
The voting process is also very political. People text in votes, they cannot vote for their own country. Then the votes are counted in each country. Each country awards 78 points. They award one country with one point, one with 2 points, one with 3 points, and so on until they award one country with 12 points. The political bit comes in when you can predict exactly who each country will vote for by which countries border each other. Europe has cliques such as the Scandinavian countries, former Yugoslavian Republics, and former members of the Soviet Union. And these cliques always vote for each other.
Even thought voting is only open for 15 minutes, presenting the points by country takes FOREVER! It took over an hour just to go through all 39 countries. Each of the people giving the points kept giving dramatic pauses, we just wanted them to get on with the show and see what I mean about the cliques of Europe?
Kate and Ashley anxiously awaiting the final results:
But in the end Denmark reigned supreme!!!!!!!!!
I was there!!!!! It was a very cool experience to be surrounded by Danes when Denmark won. It is also quite a weird feeling to feel proud and patriotic to a country that is not my homeland, but also very cool at the same time.
I will say however that Denmark is lacking in a fight song or really any sort of competitive spirit. I guess the competitive, we are the best, sort of spirit is definitely an American thing. Whenever we win everything we chant "USA" or sing the national anthem. Everyone here cheered but that was pretty much it. The quote at the beginning was a lovely quote by Kate. While the voting was going on, Denmark had the lead the whole time but Azerbaijan was close a couple of time. Being American, Kate and I did not think it was good enough to win by 1 or 2 points. We wanted Denmark to win by a landslide.
And now some random photos from last week:
Last Sunday was Mother's Day in the U.S. so I did a Google Hangout with my grandparents. I love the special effects feature, and so did they.
The weather in Denmark has been beautiful for the past couple of weeks and on Tuesday we were even brave enough to go to the beach! All those things you see in the air are people wind boarding.
The water was surprisingly warm. No I would not be brave enough to actually swim yet, but it was fine to dip my feet in.
This was a kind of fail at trying to write "Copenhagen 2013" in the sand.
In this coming week I need to really buckle down and write my final paper for one class and read the novels I was supposed to read all semester for my other class. I hate finals time. But on the bright side my friends Niklas and Krys, who were here last semester, are coming back to visit in 10 days!
Eurovision Facts:
- Norway has come in last 10 times
- The most notable of the contest have been ABBA in 1974 and Celine Dion in 1988.
- Julio Igelsias competed for Spain in 1970.
-Ireland has the most wins. It has won 7 times.
- The song "Volare" was an entry in 1958.
Countdown: 32 days
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