A Song for Europe

Congratulations Poland! You know you are one of the grown-ups in Europe when you come joint last in Eurovision! Welcome to the club! Come in, sit down, have a scotch.
Have you met our fellow loser, Germany...?

We watched the whole thing on a big screen in the student halls out past Galeria Krakowska. Incidentally, students in Poland have one bathroom per ten people and you have to keep a close eye on your own toilet paper...

The problem with watching Eurovision abroad is that you miss out on Terry Wogan's brilliantly sarcastic commentary. Worse still, you find yourself trying to substitute your own gags, which seem extremely funny at the time (halfway down 50cl of Lech and a bag of paprika crisps), but which are completely lost on your non-British fellow spectators.

Mind you, it's almost exciting if you watch it with people from countries which might actually win (Croatia, Turkey, Romania...).

Depressingly enough, if I were an alien landing in Europe on Eurovision night, I would think that humans all spoke a single tongue: English, with a heavy Slavic accent, darlink. You may have won the competition, but language is power: take that, Mother Russia!

And the quality of the music?
As one of the girls remarked dryly:
- You hear 'combination, imagination, excitation' ... and then you like the song...