APRIL 25

WELCOME TO THE 10TH EDITION OF THE EUROVISION DIARY!

Vilka everyone! (that is supposed to mean hello, but might as well mean something completely different!) It’s time for you guys to get some education! So here are some pretty cool facts about the country we’re in! The Russian Federation is, by far, the largest country in the world. It covers more than one-eighth of the Earths surface. They have 11!!!!!!! time zones in Russia. ELEVEN! There are 142 milliion people living here, divided into 160 ethnic groups in Russia, speaking over 100 languages, and the Constitution gives the individual republics the right to make their native language official jointly with Russian. The modern Russian Alphabet is a variant of the cyrillic alphabet and has 33 letters. Foreigners can communicate with the locals in either English, which is the most common second language, but also in French, German, Spanish or Italian. But…… their Swedish is no better than my Russian…… The local currency is the Ruble, and the exchange rate is around 1 EURO=45 Ruble. Our experience is that if you stay away from the tourist traps, it’s pretty cheap to eat and drink over here.

Meet Pushkin! He is our pet bear from Hard Rock Cafe’ Moscow, and of course we named him after the founder of modern Russian literature, Alexander Pushkin. See……. Aren’t  you feeling educated now?

Oops! One of the cherry pickers ran out of diesel today, of course in top position……….

As I have said before, there is activity all around the venue, but also inside. Here is the press centre, where all the 2 000 journalists can sit and work.

Pufferfish is in da house! Timo has been programming these for a week now, and now the actual projection balloons are here! Better late than never! If you don’t know what a Pufferfish is, you just have to check in tomorrow, and I’ll educate you on the subject.

Ok…..?

Look how groovy the dimmer area on stage left turned out, with some ambient lighting from Schnick Schnacks, and a home made lamp. But the stage deck sofa’s doesn’t look that comfortable!

And it happened again! Last night, all of a sudden, the house was full of fire fighters, again! No worries, it was just another drill! They sure take their job serious, I think this is the fourth time this month they are doing it.

Greg could of course not just stand back, so he joined them, with bananas! What the hell do you put out with bananas dude?

Henke von Sweigbergk is in da house! Henke is our floor manager. I’m really happy to see him here! We’ve done 3-4 Eurovisions together, and we always have a GREAT time! This guy is GOOD! If he gets even better, we have to change his name to Dreigbergk……… did anyone get that joke????? If not, email me at 28centimeters@meatkebab.com.

More good old friends! In front, Martti Kittsing, he was our stage manager in Estonia back in 2002, to the left Aigars Dimza, who was our stage manager in Latvia 2003. Great working with you guys again! Far back, our Administrative Director Anton Goreslavskiy is doing thumbs up. Thanks for dealing and solving all the things you do buddy!

Manuel Vogt is still running around in his pistage green forklift, making sure that the things end up in the storage in the right order, so we can find them when we need to.

Greg is happy as a kangaroo on a trampoline! He finally got all the gear he ordered from a work supply store in Stockholm. Henke was kind enough to bring it over. It was everything from a back pack with a built in water container, to pouches, holders, flashlights and God knows what!

Late last night, out of the blue, there was a pyro show right next to our office! No one knows why, but never mind, it was pretty!

No, you shouldn’t!

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