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My trip to ESC 2011

  1. Rene New Member

    Everything startet on May 29th 2010, the day when Germany won Eurovision for the first time after 28 years, receiving 246 points. Several million people had watched the show and witnessed how Europe lost its heart to Lena’s satellite. I was one of them and I went totally nuts when it was raining the 12 points – and I knew: I’d be present at Eurovision 2011! By the end of 2010 I learned that the 2011 competetion would be held in Dusseldorf, which is close to where I live. That simply had to be a sign! But by a cruel twist of fate I could not get a single bloody ticket for the show, due to a capacity overload of the webpage, which sold them. So i sat there, being a picture of misury and almost bursting into tears everytime someone reminded me of the show I would never be going to watch live. I had almost accepted my fate, when I suddenly got an idea: I could go and get myself tickets for the jury-final! For all the non-experts: the anual jury-final is the same show and is always held one day before the final. My mother seemed not too happy about the thought of me being alone in Dusseldorf. “You don’t even know the way to our neighbors, so how would you orient youself in Dusseldorf” she said encouragingly. Unfortunately I had to confess that she was right, so I needed someone to accompany me to Eurovision. Thanks to my huge power of persuasion I made my best friend believe that ESC would be a great experience for her and I simply ignored her fear that it could be boring. From now on there was nothing standing in my way: the tickets were bought, my hair was styled and at 4:45pm we waited at the trainstation, being ready to rumble. Strange people were with us: a woman, who seemed to be only 10 years older than her son, a lady staring at us, as if she was craving for our blood and a young kid walking around like a womanizer. So, we were pretty glad when the train finally arrived. It would have been a waltz just to get in the train, but easy is not our style, so we stayed out (we didn’t know if it was the right train, since it’s destination was Dortmund, not Dussldorf...but it was the right one).We started to feel sick as we realised that we had just missed the train, although we had been standing in front of it. The next train would arrive one hour later, so we used the time to get us a delicious peach-flavoured ice-cream. After that we entered the train, which brought us to Dusseldorf’s central station, where you could already see a few bills of Lena. There were flags of all participating countries at the ceiling and the atmosphere was really chaotic: everybody wanted to go somewhere and my friend and I were standing in the center of those hectic people. Before we left, my mother had told me to go straight to the U78. That was not a club for people under 78 years, but an underground railway, which would carry us right to the ESPRIT-arena. Although we had asked several people to tell us the way, we managed to get lost after a few minutes. My friend was assiduously taking pictures and telling me not to run so fast. After having the idea that the underground railway might probably be situated under the city, we ran down a stairway – or should I say, we tried to run down a stairway, because I learned how much time many passengers seemed to have: slow moving people everywhere! A torture if you’re pressed for time. After a while we finally reached the U78 and were sure to have taken the last step on our way to Eurovision. “Get out. End of the line” a man said 2 seconds after we had rest our poor, old bones. “Great” I thought to myself – now it even made sense that the train had been empty when we entered it. We got out and seeked for the right U78, which we found surprisingly fast. A woman wrapped up in a Bosnian flag sood in front of us and snapped up the last to seats with her friend but she made good for it by giving us candies. It took us about 20 minutes to get to the arena, but that was hardly a problem since I knew, that we weren’t the only ones who were terribly late. When we arrived we had to climb up countless stairs and everywhere you could see poor little souls trying to buy or sell their tickets. We didn’t really pay attention to them, because we had everything we needed. Now we had to pass the security check. We were felt in order to find any dangerous things. I had left my pumpgun at home, so there was no problem and we could enter the Eurovision area. On our way to the arena a man wearing a “Feel your heartbeart”-shirt came towards us and I knew: I WANT IT! So, we raced to the Eurovision-shop, which, of course, was sold out short before we could buy the shirt. We ran to the next one and thanks to the jostling of my friend we soon owned two shapely, dearly bought (25€) but beautiful shirts with this huge, coloured heart on them. My legs were shaking because I had already sneaked a peek of the gigantic LED-screen, which I only knew from TV. We decided to put on our new shirts immediately and so we disappeared in the toilet. Somehow I managed to put my jacket off and my new shirt on. I was damn glad when I finally could leave because, of course it stinked like hell and the fact that someone in the room next to mine had just begun to sh*t didn’t really improve my situation. When I got out, I panted for air, recovered from the smell inside and we took some photos next to an ESC-poster. We went on. A look at our ticket let us know that we should enter the arena trough the side tunnel...But where was the side tunnel? Helplessness was written in our faces, so we got us two diet-cokes. The price (5€ per cup) was a slap in the face for every penny pincher, but at least we were not thirsty anymore. On our way out, somebody gave us some candies and a man finally told us the way to the side tunnel. I became nervous as we were walked across it and my walking pace increased again. We went upstairs and BOOOOM! we were there! I could not get it: we had actualy magaged to arrive at the arena without being knocked over, kidnapped or killed. The day seemed perfect. A pretty volunteer told us to orient towards the cameras to find our seats. We did so, but before we could rest our tired backsides, we wanted to take some pics for facebook. Of course we did that on the enlighted catwalks. After a few photos we sat down and checked our view. We were sitting farer away than expected, but the smaller stage was about five metres beside us, so we had a great view on the hosts and the danish singer. Short before the show began, a man entered the stage, who held the 30.000 members of the audience at bay. By the end of his presentation he had a plea: in a few minutes a host would accompany him and say something into a camera. When the first host would raise his arm, the audience should start to cheer as crazy. Everything went as he said. But I was clever enough to cheer even earlier, when the arena was comparatively quiet, so I could her my voice on TV the next day. Finally the show began. I was really excited, because I loved a lot of songs. Our neighbours were pretty patient, because there weren’t only a few songs I could sing along to. After a while I found it hard to cheer after every song because my voice went on strike. The lightshow was amazing. Especially when the globe rose during the finnish song, the crowd went crazy. My highlight was Lena, who entered the stage at about 10pm. The audience screamed and sang along her “Taken by a stranger”. I was glad no one knew me, because I acted pretty unrestrained. By the end of the show the lines were checked. I was amazed by the ugliness of some of the presenters of the points. Some looked shocking without make-up. In this fictitious result Italy would have been the winner. Many people left but I didn’t wanna go until I had seen the last second of the show. After the show was over we collcted some cups, which brought us 1€ per cup, but something was missing: it was the bag we had put our clothes in. Somebody must have taken it. We went crazy, but couldn’t find it. I’m still missing my favourite shirt, but nevertheless it was one of the best days of my life. J
    Code9189 likes this.

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