Last night we were lucky enough to be able to experience a true European television viewing experience. Eurovision. Neither Erik or I had ever hear of it, but Alex had us and some other French friends over for dinner last night so that we could join in the fun.

Eurovision is a Europe-wide (and the term Europe is used quite loosely, with performances by Russia and Turkey, to name a few) singing contest. Each country submits a musical act that is performed in the country of the previous years winner. This year the twenty four finalists sang their hearts out in Helsinki. After watching all the super cheesy performances, there is a fifteen minute voting period where you can vote for your favorite. But not the contestant from your own country. My favorites were Spain, whose boy-band D'NASH performed a super cheesy rendition of their hit I Love You Mi Vida. Also at the top of my list was Ukraine, whose group Verka Serduchka performed a number clad completely in gold and silver lame, and the lead singer wore a large silver star on his (her?) head and ran around tapping the backup singers on the butt. Very funny. France's entry was also hilarious. Their song 'L'Amour a la Francaise' was sung with bad accents and ridiculous costumes. The highlight that kept getting replayed was one of the lead singers wearing a fuchsia blazer running around the stage singing to the stuffed black cat on his shoulder. Fantastique!

Unfortunately, the humour seemed to be lost on the voters, and France came in 22nd out of 24.

We learned that countries tend to vote mainly for their neighbours and allies, and so most of the Eastern European countries did quite well, with Serbia taking home the first place honours. Their performance was quite good, but nothing too special, or memorable, we decided. We were also surprised at the number of votes that both Greece and Turkey received for their almost identical, and equally bad numbers, involving scantily clad back-up dancers and unattractive lead singers. Erik was voting for the UK to get zero votes, but they unfortunately picked up their only votes from Ireland near the end. Too bad. It was interesting to hear the kind of music that was popular in each country, and the countries that did quite well were all similar in terms of (what we would call) cheesiness.

I guess we just don't get it. For a contest that has been going on since 1956, there is obviously a lot of tradition involved in the show. Alex is a real veteran, and kept pointing out how the wind machine was very 'Eurovision' as well as the over the top costumes and cheesy 'I love Europe' lyrics that we often heard. We also thought it was funny that although the official languages of the show are English and French, only two of the forty+ that voted spoke French. I'll leave it to you to figure out who they were.