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.
I was on a trip to Lisbon in 2016 and stayed in a nice hotel a good bit outside the center of the city and when this city was going to host the international final in 2018 and I realized that this hotel was close to the hall I jumped at the chance and booked a room in the same hotel for the ESC stay.
In relation to the hotel, the hall was directly across the street behind a very big shopping centre, VASCO DA GAMA, so a very convenient location in that sense, and it soon turned out that this was an official hotel where several delegations stayed and that is always cool.
The delegations from Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Italy, Cyprus and Spain stayed here and we probably met all of their artists at one point or another and to prove it I am attaching this picture.
She was a super nice lady, but when I met her there she had had a day of rehearsal and was basically completely exhausted and tired, no wonder with the dance number she had I would say, otherwise I met her dancers together on another elevator ride, fit ladies indeed.
On the way up to the room, a quick elevator ride, we met Finnish Saara Alto in the elevator and I said to the person I lived with that we’ll probably meet the Swedish artist Benjamin Ingrosso, on the way down and believe my words, we actually did, the ESC world is very small sometimes.
We saw the Spanish duo at breakfast and the Dutch artist caused chaos in the reception when he had an unscheduled press conference there after he had qualified for the final.
Our own Norwegian participant Alexander Rybak lived right across the street from where I lived and I got to go with him and the delegation to a music school where he had a little program and then there was a bus ride with a police escort and then all other traffic is waved away, no one doubt who had the guts to come forward then.
After the semi-finals were over, we found that we were staying in a lucky hotel since all delegations that participated in a semi-final made it to the final and one of them that we remember fought for the victory.
Never has this island state been closer to a victory and if I had my way the international final in 2019 would have been held in Cyprus and not in Israel, although that victory was deserved, just to say the least, but this year’s stage show undoubtedly had Eleni Foureira.
My memories of Eurovision 2018 have mostly been covered by Morten. especially meeting Finland’s artist and Sweden’s artist in the lift at the same time. I had another memory of the lift but quite embarrassing. I got into the lift and there were three people and they spoke Dutch. They said hallo to me and I asked if they were journalists to cover the event. Then the one guy answered, no I am actually the artist. It turned out he was Waylon and two of his backing singers. I had not recognized Waylon.
Featured image – Wikipedia