I remember talking to a fellow chatter in Vienna, about how we would never stop “doing this”. Going to Eurovision, applying for accreditation, doing coverage for our respective fan media. Enjoying the buzz of the bubble.

Well, here I am in Berlin, not in Kyiv. Not at Eurovision for the second time in a row. Not running back and forth with my camera. Not picking up stuff from my pigeonhole. Not partying in Euroclub.

After Vienna, I – as the editor-in-chief of this website – thought it was about time to re-evaluate everything. My personal relationship with the contest, my budget and travel planning, and of course escgo!. This phase of reevaluation took me a while, but now I have the results, and I thought it was time to share some of them with you, dear readers!

Vienna 2015: Good times in the bubble. Eduard in handcuffs.

escgo! and the sound of silence

It’s true, escgo! hasn’t been on location since Vienna 2015. This has various reasons. Put simply: With only three team members, we are a rather small website. And while Eurovision indeed flows through our veins, attending it can’t always be the top priority, year after year. It costs time and money, and on top of that, running a website like this (and its previous incarnation) and providing content is a lot of unpaid, and often unnoticed, work. Also, we’re getting older. But while we are getting older, we are also getting wiser, and this brings along a kind of self-awareness. Who are we? What is escgo!, and what is it not? In the past 24 months, you might indeed have wondered where we were. The answer is short but simple and honest: We don’t have to “do this”. We aren’t Eurovision News. We are a small, independent website, run by human beings with personal lives. And we took a break.

Måns Zelmerlöw right after winning Melodifestivalen.

Expect the unexpected

Still, just as you might have thought we’re tired of “doing this”, you see a freshly relaunched escgo! in front of you. This also took a lot of work to realise. In the past week, which was kind of a hot phase, each of us had at least one rather sleepless night. So your justified question might be why we are back with a completely fresh website and new content? The answer: We want to “do this”. It’s a passion. The blogging. The press buzz. Making rehearsal photos. And this time, differently: We are doing what we want to do, now more than ever. Because it’s all about having fun. And yes, this kind of work is often a lot of fun. We’re just getting rid of everything that isn’t fun: the musts, the compulsions, the pressure. We’re a Eurovision Blog.

After Vienna, we from the escgo! team decided to lean back, meditate and take a break until we could launch this new website, which will allow us to get rid of some old restraints. With the new website, we can be a lot more freestyle, more spontaneous, more personal, more active.

Also freestyle: Bledar Sejko’s hair.

Anything is possible!

This was the guideline that we had on our minds when we were creating the new escgo!. And now you see the result: our relaunched website, and our re-evaluated fan brains.

We don’t do anything because we “have to”. We do everything because we “want to”:

Reacting to news instead of delivering it. Blogging about Eurovision. Personally. Independently. Unconditionally.

Sure, we can’t promise to be back at Eurovision in the near future, but if our personal lives and the gods of accreditation allow it, we certainly want to be!

Rome, Lisbon or Sofia 2018?

The future is unplannable, but escgo! is now well prepared for that. Join us on this path.

escgo! is back and ready for more.

The reason why I post this now is because I want to.