schneefink

I was very amused by the Austrian TV commentator's reaction to Austria's Eurovision win: "Really? After eleven years, again already? Is that even possible if you're not Sweden?"
Also amused by the immediate reactions of "very cool, but so expensive, can we even afford that?" because of the recently (immediately after the national election, by complete coincidence of course) revealed giant budget deficit. At least last time afterwards it was calculated that Eurovision was a net win for the economy as a whole and also the city (but not for the network.) Fingers crossed it'll be in Vienna again, this time I'd love to maybe actually go.

I was too sick for the semifinal watch parties this week, unfortunately, and I only caught most of the finale. Not one of the best years imo but still fun. I wish they'd reduce the flashing lights. I was happy to find out one of JJ's songwriters/managers was a singer of "Who the hell is Edgar?", that song deserved a lot more points two years ago.

Ukraine won Eurovision! Not unexpected, but I was still surprised just how many votes they got from the public. Several countries did much worse than I expected (France, Finland, … , even Germany) and others much better (the UK song was not bad but not that good; though I did enjoy the disbelieving reactions.) As every year I was torn between really disliking the jury voting, and appreciating the dramatic moments that result from it (zero points from the public for Switzerland!)
To my own surprise, the song stuck in my head this morning is Romania's.

Speaking of Ukraine, sunflower_auction is open for bidding. My offers – for a game review and a fic – are here.

Saturday was Eurovision! I still have several of the songs in my head playing in random order at random times, leading to weird combinations.

It's odd, I never used to be very into Eurovision, not even when it was in Vienna. Then the past few years I started watching with LB, but I only really got into it last year, when it didn't happen. There was a virtual Eurovision event by Rusty Quill on Twitch though, which I enjoyed a lot. (Iceland won before Sweden, which I was fine with. My personal favorite was the Ukraine, I also liked Lithuania a lot, and Ireland and Latvia. (Though, I made those notes last year and now watched it again and went… okay, last year was weird.))

So this year DD and I (and LB via Skype for the final, because during the week our internet didn't want him to) watched both the semi-finals too. (I was sad that disco ball man from North Macedonia didn't make it to the final. So shiny.) Turns out that only adds to the experience of watching the final because I'm already invested in the songs. Several of them grew on me a lot when listening to them the second time, like Cyprus and Ukraine. I also really enjoyed Iceland and Lithuania, and also Norway, and France and Switzerland were enjoyable too, but I didn't really care for Greece or Portugal or Bulgaria. Italy also wasn't one of my favorites, but so many people are happy that they won that I'm glad they did.