May 2: Ein Lagerfeuer an meinem Schreibtisch

Ich brauche ein Lagerfeuer an meinem Schreibtisch!

Second day of artist rehearsals has come to an end!

It’s been a really good day, and all delegations left the building with a happy face.
Sure, it’s not perfect yet, we need to add a shot here, remove another one, change focus or colors on lights, add or remove saturation or colors in the led graphics. But these are all small problems, and we are equipped for handling these types of changes.

As I see it, we only have two big problems!
1* It’s REALLY cold inside the venue and I caught a cold. I’ve been trying to cure it with vitamins for days, but it does NOT help, so tomorrow I’ll try with vodka instead! Hope that works better!

2* Jon Ola Sand is VERY protective about the candy that is placed on our table in front of the stage. It’s really for both of us, but he claims it’s ALL his. I guess it’s good to be the king………..

Look how scared Sietse is! I'm telling you, do NOT get in between Jon Ola and his candy!


Coolest glasses today? MALTA!


WELCOME BACK SAN MARINO!
I have to confess….. I made a complete fool of myself, mixing them up with Andorra, and telling them that I actually have been to their country in connection to a trip to Northern Spain. Oups! They pointed it out, and thank God, I’ve been to San Marino as well, like 10 times or so (cheaper alcohol than in Italy), so I think I got away with it in the end of the day!


Daria from Croatia performing ¨Celebrate¨


After removing the green part from the Iceland song, they were very happy!


Kati Wolf from Hungary. Great song, great voice, great performance!


And now to something completely different! Nope, this is not a demonstration against the crew catering! It’s Homens da Luta (the men of the struggle) performing their song A Luta é Alegria. Very entertaining indeed!


You know what!? I do not recall the average quality of the songs ever been as good as they are this year! Here’s Evelina Sasenko performing C`est Ma Vie.


We've been working REALLY hard to make the look for the Azerbaijan song look good on TV, and we are almost there. We did some more tweaks late last night after rehearsals, and I think we are there now! Looks fantastic!


Greece was not 100% happy after today's rehearsal,but we have a VERY good dialog with them, and they trust us to give them what they want. And we WILL!


I'm not sure if I already told you, but I have some VERY good friends within the Azerbaijan Delegation. Tarmo Krimm is in there, whom been the show producer and/or venue manager for 8 Eurovisions in a row since 2002, Pavlo Grytsak whom was the Executive Producer in 2005, and Kai Reiss whom was the Head of Sound FOH at Eurovision 2008 and 2009.
Anyway, I was supposed to meet up with them downtown Düsseldorf last night for dinner. But due to various meetings and stuff I needed to do before I left the venue, I never made it to dinner. At 22:30, Pavlo calls me and says: ¨Well, if you can’t come to dinner, dinner will have to come to you, so, at 23:00 there was this gorgeious pig knuckle waiting for me when I got back to my hotel, and 6 alt beers. Now, THAT is friendship!
In fact, I’ll have to go now, so I don’t miss tonight’s dinner with them!

Ciao!