Great expectations…

I have to admit it – I wasn’t particularly looking forward to the second semi-final. I thought most of the best songs were in the first semi-final last Tuesday. What a surprise then that I actually the show much more than I expected. In fact, you could say that it was one of the best that I have attended – not so perhaps for the music, but for the fantastic atmosphere.  Every song got a huge ovation, with the crowd genuinely excited to be there. In some ways it felt like the actual final.

The opening and interval acts helped with the maintained buzz in the arena. And once again the hilarious Sarah Dawn Finer did one of her Linda Woodruff skits – one of the best things about the Contest this year.  Whilst I’m warming to our host Petra, that Mary Poppins delivery is still a tad irritating! But what a show – I’m sure it looked fab on telly…

 

There’s a lot of stuff going on in the arena during the Contest – and of course, with it being a television broadcast, there is a need to capture the excitement of the crowd. I got a bit giddy as we were sitting next to a bunch of Finnish fans, and one of the roaming camera crews were considering filming them for a reaction shot at the end of their performance. We would have been on the telly if they had!  But no, they moved on.  What fun though that we witnessed the Greek fans being giddy with tipsy when their time came to go crazy for the viewers at home…

 

 

So then the results came through and – by some miracle – I got 9/10 on the napkin of death!  I’m gutted that I removed Hungary from my list at the last minute – but I’ll get over my error of judgement!

The scene afterwards when the the successful acts returned to the stage shows what it means to them, and us…

And so, we move through to the final phase of ESC2013 – next stop, the final! 😀