Martin (8.30)

It’s Tuesday morning, the sun is shining (again!), and a few sore heads are being nursed following the opening of Euro Fan Café last night.

While Euro Club has been a fixed element of the live ESC experience for many years, the Euro Café concept has never settled into one defined format. In Belgrade it was an alternative daytime and late-night meeting venue on the “right” side of the river, in Moscow it was basically the only place ESC DJs were allowed to spin their tunes, in Oslo it was the lobby of a hotel, in Düsseldorf it was an extension of the Euro Club building – and so on.

This year, the organisers have decided to make the Euro Fan Café almost a rival to Euro Club. For the whole two weeks, the legendary Moriska Paviljongen in the middle of Folkets Park will be hosting nights and events geared towards hardcore and less hardcore ESC fans. Entrance can be purchased on a nightly basis, but by far the best value is a wristband:

…which costs from SEK 250 for members of the public down to as little as SEK 100 for the accredited press, and which grants access to all of the events over the whole fortnight. Last night things got going with an ice-breaking karaoke event, including our very own editor Danny giving his best on “Crisalide (Vola)” and Sweet Dreams’ “I’m Never Giving Up”, before a DJ took to the decks and played ESC and NF classics into the night. Not a bad start to proceedings – and that’s before we even get to the wider program of daily talk shows, appearances by the 2013 performers, the “Nul Points” evening and more. A good way of bringing some of the usual Euro Club vibe to a wider audience and making the whole thing more accessible, we think.

And now it’s time to grab some breakfast and head to the press centre to see what the second day of rehearsals brings!

Danny (12.10)

Afternoon all! Martin kindly offered to take the morning rehearsals so I have been able to get a lie in this morning, which was well needed! As Felix mentioned earlier, I performed LIVE on stage last night doing my best impression of Sweet Dreams with fellow Scot David Elder – you can see for yourself here!

Later on I even treated the audience to my own version of Valentina Monetta! EuroCafe this year is in an excellent venue in the middle of Folkets Park, and it’s great to have an alternative to EuroClub, after last year when the it was the only venue and a lot of the time they didn’t even play Eurovision music! No such troubles this year as we had Louis Klomp from 12points.tv on the decks playing Eurovision tunes – I even caught our editor Felix doing the CHA CHA hand movements to Solayoh! Apparently there is Eurovisionoke on every evening and we’ve already heard from other fans that they want to have their moment in the limelight. I guess everyone secretly wants their three minutes of fame!

20:44 (Felix)

Now it’s time for me to add my thoughts on the past 24 hours, as I didn’t have the chance to let things sink in yet. As usual at Eurovision, you get lots of little stories and suddenly there’s this big book! This is the place to tell you about those things that don’t fit into any rehearsal blog etc.

Martin and Danny already wrote about the Euro Fan Café in Moriska Paviljongen before. It was indeed a fun night which indeed nearly felt like a small Euroclub. One memory of that night that I’ll always keep though is this old woman which must have been in her late 90s, apparently not knowing anyone there, but still swinging her hips to the beats of Alcazar and alike.

Only at Eurovision!

I still work on how to get around in Malmö, as our hotel is quite remote from the centre, and  – as the only official hotel – doesn’t have a stop for the official shuttle busses nearby. There are a lot of stops in the rather small area, that Malmö downtown is, but then – even though the official busses run right next to our hotel – they don’t stop!

So I lost quite some valuable time so far by searching for public bus connections and walking, the latter at least will have a good effect on my hips.

Then today we had the 2nd rehearsal day in Euroclub, now with a bigger cinema to watch the feed from the stage.
Moldova was amazing as expected, but two songs moved a lot on my list: Montenegro upwards (that’s just great on stage), and Serbia unfortunately downwards (these clothes are really ridiculous, and not in a funny way). A lot of technical issues accompanied me throughout the day, so I still couldn’t find the routine as planned, but I am trying to find a solution.

My personal highlights from today was a quote by Andrius Pojavis (“hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst”), my interview with Aliona Moon (her hair will be “more cosmic” than in the national final!), and a lot of little random things.

Back in the hotel, I found that my room wasn’t made, so I went to the front desk, shared my thoughts, got offered a new room, but in the end preferred a free breakfast tomorrow.

I can’t believe this was already the 4th day in Malmö, and I still feel like I didn’t really arrive yet. Trust me, that feeling will come right before the last day!

So far, my impression is that the staff is really friendly and helpful, the Euroclub press facilities don’t make a lot of sense to me though. I’d assume it would be easier for everyone to open the press centre on day 1, that doesn’t necessarily mean, that the rehearsals would be open. The Euroclub location is nice though, and there’s free coffee, so that’s something.

The biggest problem – at least for me – is definitely the transport, because public busses stop running around midnight, and – as said – the official busses don’t stop anywhere near my hotel, despite it being an official one.

This post will be updated throughout the day, so stay tuned!