Eurovision 2013

Yesterday the 57th Eurovision Song Contest was held in Sweden, Malmø and as many of you know Denmark won. We actually won! Yeah, it's a big deal for us Danes since we've only won twice, back in 1964 and 2000 but now we can add another year, another trophy to our collection. It might sound like I'm a big fan of this contest but honestly I'm just glad that we won, that we have something (someone) to be proud of. Anyway for those of you who haven't heard of this before, here's a short summary:

Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) started in 1956 and is a music competition including the European countries (though with exceptions!) This year 26 countries competed in the finale and there were 16 countries in the first semifinal and 17 countries in the second.  The contest is held by the nation which won last time, meaning being will hold ESC in 2013 - where it's going to be we don't know yet, but maybe close to where Sidsel and I live. Also the way the winner is chosen by the people, meaning that you can vote by texting or calling a special number - just like any other weird singing/talent competition you know from the TV.

Now that you know all of that I'll talk about the actually show. As I've already mentioned a hundred times Denmark won but we didn't just win because Norway and Sweden voted for us. The thing is, when it comes to ESC there's an unwritten set of rules where neighbor-countries have to vote for each other otherwise you're a bad neighbor (simple as that!). For example if you go to Wiki you can see that Denmark as give most points to Sweden (from 1978-2012) and we've accepted most points from Norway (also from 1978-2012). This set of unwritten rules also applies to the other countries which means that the voting sometimes might not be fair and the wrong winner is chosen. But yeah, it's just for fun.

Okay, the last bit will be about the famous Danish kiss from 1957 which actually caused us loosing the title to I think Holland. But this kiss was the longest ever seen on stage and made people, maybe, uncomfortable or something, (pfft don't know why they didn't like it) but today it's a part of our Danish history and if you're just a slight bit interested in music, this is a piece of information that you have to know.  So at least but not last I'll put a link to the winning song of ESC 2013 with the words - Oh hell yeah, we won!