Düsseldorf the 4th of May 2011,
Dear Diary,
After having been lulled into thinking that the old phrase was just that; an old phrase, we were taught in lesson in punctionality last night.
Not much is on schedule with rehearsals and press conferences being dealayd each day so far. Nothing wrong with that as it is a part of the Eurovision Song Contest and us who have been covering it for years are use to it.
Another thing we are use to is that the socalled parties many of the delegations are having never actually kicks off from the time of start and the artists certainly don’t show up before half an hour or even an hour into it… Well, it doesn’t count for Switzerland who expect everyone to be just as precies as a Swiss watch!
Last night we went to what we – and a lot of other people – thought was a Swiss party. It was mentioned to start at 22:00 so arriving at 22:30 should still mean that we would be there before Anna Rossinelli would perform. We were wrong… she went on at 22:00, sang four songs and left again. We arrived basically at the same time as most others who knows not to come from the start and was faced with that it all had ended when we came!
And btw. we are unfortunately not going to have any banana or kiwi days. It is only apples… until we have had an average of 100 apples each! Yes, it turns out that they have been given 250.000 apples and once they are gone we won’t have more of them. Well, I can’t really see that happening, but I am quite sure we will all not want to see apples for a while after returning home.
The indoor cycling/running track has still not been taken in use – probably because we actually do get plenty of exercise walking to and back from rehearsals. Hands up though for that once you have entered the press centre and been through the security there you don’t meet anymore of that before you come back the next day. It can be quite frustrating having to go through another security for the rehearsals so I am very pleased that it is not the case this year – at least not yet.
We did arrive to the news of German police having arrested three men in the airport who aparantly was planning to do terrorism to the Eurovision Song Contest. Quite a scary thought, which certainly was talked about. After a couple of days the message came that Osama Bin Laden had been killed. Although this happend before the thing here in Düsseldorf it did somehow stop all talk about terrorism.
Now it is back to just being about the Eurovision Song Contest. And believe me, there is plenty to talk about regarding that. Just take Sweden’s first rehearsal from yesterday, which reminded a little too much of Denmark’s ditto last year in terms of technical problems. Or what about Dana International today? Never have I experienced so many people being in agreement of the last position in the second semi-final being reserved to Israel this year and as a real diva she of course cancelled the press conference today…
