Our first day in Stockholm is over, and before we begin with our updating daily blog articles, we’re having this article about yesterday!

Ca. 12.00 CET (Felix)

I arrived in the press centre! The accreditation.. ehm.. container.. was rather hard to find, but after asking people, I actually managed to get there!

But before that, on my way with the Tunnelbana, I took – just as every year – special note of their seat clothes:

Ca. 12:30-14:30 (Felix)

Already met some well known faces from the chat and surrounding territories! 8 out of 10 MF-finalists do their first rehearsals, Danny is there but sick, Loreen apparently is not sick, but at the doctor. Maybe she also got to know that you can’t put bets on “Euphoria” anymore, because it’s apparently a 100 percent winner, according to Swedish betting company Svenska Spel. Aftonbladet reports that not even Eric Saade was close to the odds that Loreen got up until today.
Danny at least appeared on stage for the photo shooting:

After the photo session, the artists turned up in the greenroom, so we had the chance to get some short video messages from Lisa Miskovsky…

…and a longer video message from Björn Ranelid:

Swedish media reported of Ranelid having had a “collapse”, which was supposed to be in the context of his entry being criticized by Swedish media and music professionals. However, as you can see, if collapse or not, he feels good again. He got the journalists at his side in the second rehearsal, as he was performing partly in French and English, which was reportedly (we were off by then) entertaining.

20:00 Welcome Party at Stadshuset/City Hall (Martin)

As part of our accreditation, we “mere” journalists were fortunate enough to be invited to the Welcome Party at the wonderful Stadshuset building. I’d been up the tower before, way back in 2000, but never inside – and what a remarkable environment it is for a celebration, all high ceilings and incredibly ornate gold-mosaic walls. Felix captured some visual impressions, which you can see below.

Of course, the party was all about the stars, and we saw most of them – including Loreen, back from the doctor’s! Dead By April and Top Cats were there early, and both groups seem like terribly polite young men – they were going round, shaking hands, giving interviews and generally being very personable. David Lindgren is very short. Björn Ranelid was buzzing around, making cheerfully disparaging comments about people’s local hockey teams. Sarah Dawn Finer went back to the buffet more than once, but who can blame her – it was great! (And the red wine wasn’t bad, either… though we had to test a lot of it before coming to that conclusion.)

22:30 Torget (Martin)

As is traditional on the Thursday night of MF “weekend”, we finished the night in the long-standing Torget bar, irritating the locals by singing along to every single song, draining the local beer resources and bumping into occasional Top Cats and similar. A quiet first night, then…

All in all, what can we say?

Martin: Ever since Andra Chansen, I’ve thought this was the most varied and fascinating MF final in years, and nothing I saw on Thursday changed my mind. Of course, the bookies think we have a dead-cert winner – but stranger things have happened before… Looking forward to the first full dress rehearsal on Friday night, when things might start to make more sense!

Felix: I think it was an interesting first day with two favourites missing the first rehearsals. However, judged by the people’s talks, it’s all about Björn Ranelid and Loreen, those two at least dominated today’s small talks and media.