Eurovision 2009, with Mark sporting his Alpine hat. The stuffed cow is Winnie the Kuh (Kuh is German for cow and is pronounced as in 'Pooh'). Mark bought him for me on the German leg of our honeymoon tour and he often presides at our Eurovision table.
Every year for the past eight years, Mark and I have enjoyed the cheese fest that is the Eurovision Song Contest with a cheese fest of our own. It has become our annual tradition to have our own little Eurovision party, the main point of which is to try to get foods to represent as many European countries as possible. Whilst enjoying our continental victuals, we amuse ourselves by writing our own comments about each of the performances. In 2003, Eurovision fell in the middle of our honeymoon tour of Europe, so we bought a load of continental foods and holed ourselves up in our Swiss hotel to watch the contest on BBC world.
This year we managed to have 12 countries represented in various cheeses, meats, breads, savoury biscuits and sweet treats. In Eurovision 2009, the UK was represented by a bottle of ginger beer...very Famous Five and, therefore, exceptionally English! Portugal got our vote this year with their extremely perky little tune and we were disappointed that they didn't do better. Podling No.3 obviously knows how to pick a winner though as he/she was very active during Norway's song, which then went on to achieve the highest score ever in Eurovision. 
Our Eurovision 2003 party, which we enjoyed in Switzerland whilst on our honeymoon. The small dog I'm holding is Mini Mark, a gift from Mark to me when I was going to America for three weeks during my PhD. He goes with us whenever we are travelling and I suppose you could call him our unofficial family mascot.
As always we really enjoyed our evening, though it is continually disappointing to see the political block voting that goes on the Eastern and Baltic states. It was nice to see the UK doing so well this year, though I have to confess that Mark and I both disliked our song and found it rather dull! Ah well, if there's one thing that the Eurovision Song Contest proves year after year it's that there's no accounting for taste!
3 comments:
Another fantastic photo of Mark! We didn't manage to have a party this year but watched with a friend of ours. The voting didn't seem as bad as usual, I have to say. We quite liked the Moldovan song and the cossack-type dancers and were MUCH amused by the German entry and the one with the "hamster wheels" (the anti-crisis girl one with the rhymes that were so bad they were brilliant). Anyway, enough about Eurovision, I should get out more!!!
I thought this year the songs were all a little 'samey.' I like the songs where they just take the mick out of Eurovision - last year's "we are the winners... of Eurovision" comes to mind!
You can always rely on the German entry for a good laugh can't you!
It's true that Eurovision is harder to take the mick out of now that so many countries seem to take it all so seriously.
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