Eurovision Final in Malmö, Sweden

The Eurovision Final was an experience in itself! I - unfortunately - did not have tickets to the main event in the arena as the tickets sold out too quickly so I only got tickets to the Semi Final 2. So we had to either watch it on tv and be boring, or find a public venue that showed the event on live TV which we did!

There were two major public screenings, one was at the Eurovision Village and the other was at the Folketspark in the South of Malmö;. This had entertainment, dancing, a quiz and Swedish karaoke!

I got in touch with some couchsurfers who organised a picnic spot to share which was lovely! We meet some really nice people and also others who we were sitting next to as well, most people were Swedish and a few other nationalities. Quite a few Brits supporting Britain!

One of the CS group brought some skin crayons to draw flags on ourselves, it was fun being patriotic!

It became busier and more packed at it grew closer to 9pm when it was due to start and people were getting more and more desperate for spots close to the TV screen. Lots very very rude too and it was quite ridiculous!

Finally the Eurovision Song Contest began! All 26 countries performed, more than I remember than last year so it took a while!

For the first 5 songs the bass was ridiculously loud and people were yelling in Swedish an apparently popular please that meant 'turn down the bass' which they fixed after the fifth song!

These ones I really liked;

Belgium
Estonia
Malta
Russia
Germany
Sweden
Denmark
Iceland
Ukraine

My favourite counties were Iceland, Sweden (I am probably biased as is hard not to be influenced by all the Swedes surrounding us!) and Belgium.

Voting took a long time but I was very impressed by all the Swedes supporting Denmark when they started getting ahead with the points. They were so excited about it, I know it only takes 20 mins to get from Malmö to Denmark on the train but I didn't realise the two countries were so respectful and supportive! It is wonderful to see!

We didn't leave the park until 1am but there were plenty of trains back to Lund where we are staying.

Eurovision was created to break down social barriers between European counties, and I am so moved and humbled to actually experience this first hand. It is alive and well! Long live Eurovision!