Morten Thomassen from Norway decided to write about some of his memories of Eurovision and the Norwegian Eurovision selection. ESC Covers again will publish it after google translating it from Norwegian to English.

We are going back to the year 2003, Norway was finally back after a year’s ban due to our last place in 2001, back then the position was given a year following if you were allowed to participate the following year.

For some countries, this meant that they only took part every other year, and our Nordic friends Denmark and Finland had to sit in the expulsion box this year, so to speak.

With a year out of the competition, NRK decided to really take it all the way out, the final was held in Oslo Spektrum and out of 450 submitted entries, 12 of them were included in the final, which was to be fully and completely decided by the people, the expert juries had thus got a few years in the deportation box.

For the vast majority of fans, unknown artist Jostein Hasselgård charmed the Norwegian people with his ballad “I’m Not Afraid To Move On” and he did that in the first MGP final broadcast live on the internet, no less.

Some may remember the somewhat embarrassing halftime feature in this MGP final, where the tribute to the Latvian organizers of the ESC final contained a little too many Russian elements for it to be completely Latvian, until several ambassadors were furious so NRK had to lie flat and apologize exactly this.

Arriving in Riga, perhaps not many people had the utmost faith in our song, very good as this was the ballad that stood out this final night and collected a nice fourth place, about 30 points behind the victory match which this year was between three countries and to a change Norway did not win even though we got 12 points from the first jury.

A paltry 3 points separated first and third place and it wasn’t until the final vote that Sertab Erener got Turkey’s first and what unfortunately looks like it could be their only victory.

I was in Riga all week and got a bit of everything, Russian tATu as expected made big headlines, at the press conferences they ignored most of the questions from the journalist and instead were very busy drawing, you on the question of what they were doing in Riga when they weren’t rehearsing for the show, the answer was not surprising: “We lie in bed and have wild and unrestrained sex all the time”, well what could you really expect from a girl duo who outwardly had the image that they were lesbians.

Riga was a very nice city, but Norwegian companies such as Statoil, Narvesen and Rema 1000, looked almost like being at home with the exception that the Rema stores in Riga had a much better selection than what we are used to from home and also a wine department.

You get close contact with artists sometimes and at one or another party I was at, the Spanish Beth was going to perform, I sat at a table quite close to the stage and drank water of all things and just before she was going to perform Beth asked if there was water in the glass in front of me and when I confirmed this she drank it up just as well, so in a way our lips have met, albeit via a glass of water.

Luckily I was healthy and fast so to the extent that Beth didn’t deliver 100% on stage vocally I can’t be blamed for that.

For year 2003 will always be remembered for one of the biggest visa problems. As there was no direct flight to Riga, I flew with Austrian airlines to Vienna and because there was also no daily flights to Riga from there, it would meant sitting almost 48  hours on the airport. Luckily I had a penfriend in Vienna and decided to get off and stay there before flying to Riga. But for that I needed a Schengen visa and previously that was fairly easy to get (although expensive). This time totally different. A day before I handed in my visa application at the Austrian embassy a South African woman returned from there and died on the plane without having  enough medical cover. So the embassy put in a strict policy especially for people traveling alone and not in a tour group. This meant they wanted to see the MELDIZETTER of my Austrian friend. Before this I had never heard of this thing and it took almost 2 weeks to get it and another 2 weeks before I finally had the Schengen visa from Austria. That arrived at me one day before I had to leave for my trip, and I was stranded without a LATVIAN visa (they were not part of Schengen at the time).  They also did not have an embassy in South Africa. But luckily the Latvian delegation remembered me from the previous year in Tallinn when I got the Baltic visa from the Latvian embassy in the Netherlands. They said they would allow me visa free into the country but on my arrival on the Sunday, there would be some officials to take me through customs and that would cost 20 dollars. I accepted it of course and on my arrival, these 3 officials were waiting for me and took me through everything like a VIP. That pushed Latvia to the top of European countries in my eyes.

Featured image – Wikipedia