The Eurovision Song Contest made me move to Europe
Some people think it’s just a silly music show. I think it changed my life
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People think it’s stupid. Cheesy. Embarassing, even, liking the Eurovision Song Contest.
Being obsessed with the Eurovision Song Contest? That puts you in a league of your own. Something that makes some people question your judgment.
How can she be taken seriously when she likes something so silly?
But here’s the thing. Like most obsessions, my love for Eurovision is not so much about the contest itself. If it were, it would be a once-a-year thought, not a year-round one.
Humans don’t latch onto things just for the thing. We are not that surface-level.
No. We latch because that thing stands for something deeper. It represents and reminds us of something. Often something beautiful and comforting and joyful.
Because if it’s nothing else, the Eurovision Song Contest is joyful.
1994. I’m nine years old. Eurovision starts late for a nine-year-old British child — 8 pm. Even later for my six-year-old brother. But my father — the more strict of my two parents — is working away from home so my mother says we can watch it. She makes us our favourite treat, oven-baked fries laid out on kitchen roll inside a shallow wicker basket, ketchup on the side.
It’s nothing much, but in our house, it’s an indulgence.
We snuggle down into my mum’s bed, the three of us. I don’t know how much we watch before I fall asleep. Maybe an hour, perhaps two. But for those hours, it’s just the three of us against the world, watching a window into Europe on a small, grainy TV in a bedroom in the middle of the English countryside.
It’s a rebellion, that late night. Those fries.
More than that, for nine-year-old me, Eurovision became a window into a life I knew I wanted, even back then.
A life in Europe.
2008. Mykonos, Greece. My husband-to-be and I are backpacking around Europe for the summer. An early twenties “fuck you” to the corporate life we’ve only just been exposed to.
We quit our jobs. We pack a backpack. And we end up in Greece just as Eurovision fever hits.
This isn’t Britain; there is no Eurovision cynicism here, just a desperate desire for Greece to win. The contestant Kalomira is everywhere, blaring from bars and on TV. Kids sing her song Secret Combination on the bus back from the beach.
We hole up in our €20 a night apartment to watch the contest on creaky beds. The windows are open, which exposes us to the Eurovision parties happening all around. Every time Greece wins points, people erupt.
It’s late — gone 2 am — and it’s noisy, but people don’t care. This is Eurovision.
The next morning, our landlady apologises for the noise. Don’t, we tell her. This is the first time our love for Eurovision has been validated.
And for the first time on our travels, we don’t feel like fish out of water, tourists skimming the surface of Europe. We feel a part of it. A shared love of something literally designed to bring Europe together.
And I feel it. Deeply.
2021. Finally, my dreams of living in Europe have come true, at arguably the worst time in recent history.
It’s Covid-era and we’re stationed in Croatia. We become part of a bubble of diaspora and travellers. Times like these quickly bond strangers together, so we become like family.
And family watch Eurovision together.
An American friend is dubious about his first viewing of the contest. He watches me predict the results from some of the countries. Cyprus gives 12 points to Greece. San Marino does the same for Italy.
How do you do that he asks.
Think politics, I tell him. Who is most likely to receive top points from that country?
And just like that, he is hooked.
Covid rules are in force, so we have to leave the venue we’ve rented before the end of the show. We take an iPad to the beach, surrounding it to watch the final results. We feel closer as a group than we ever have.
That year, we were living what Eurovision embodies. A gaggle of Europeans (and others) coming together for a common cause. To be entertained and have fun. To forget, even if just for a night, that life is hard and we’re all thousands of miles from our family.
We have our Eurovision family now. And for the three following years, we meet up to watch together again.
As I write this, I’m listening to my Eurovision Song Contest playlist. Every three minutes (as mandated by Eurovision rules), a new song. Every song, a different memory.
Now, it’s Joci Pápai, Hungary’s 2019 entry. My brain instantly goes back to 1991, driving through Hungary towards Romania for my father’s work. We stay in a crumbling, old-school hotel reminiscent of The Shining. It’s bitingly cold, but we have wild boar stew to warm us up. A taste revelation for seven-year-old me.
I’ve never forgotten it.
Next, it’s The Common Linnets, the Netherlands’ 2014 entry, and I’m back in Amsterdam for my 10-year wedding anniversary. A happy blur of a weekend of food and wine and blisteringly hot cycle rides.
Followed by Moldova’s 2022 entry Chisinau to Bucharest, which reminds me of walking down a Bucharest boulevard in 2023 and seeing a bus on its way to Chisinau, the Moldovan capital. A seemingly innocuous thing — but not for a Eurovision fan.
Now it’s Tulia’s Fire of Love, Poland’s 2021 entry. The women sing in traditional white voice which reminds me of walking into a church in Poland’s Poznań in 2010. A choir was practising and it was like nothing I’d heard before. Haunting and beautiful.
Europe is my home, but it’s also my deepest, most enduring love. Ever since that first Eurovision viewing, I knew I wanted to experience as much of Europe as I could. I didn’t want to just see the sights, I wanted to live it.
And I have. I’ve visited 23 European countries. Long-term lived in two more. I’ve dedicated my adult life to learning as much as I can about Europe and to experiencing it for myself.
And I owe almost all of that to Eurovision.
Like I say, humans are not surface-level. And neither is the Eurovision Song Contest.
Yes, it can be silly. No, the songs aren’t Taylor Swift-level productions. But it’s not meant to be serious, it’s meant to foster community, connection and conviviality.
My headphones have died, so I’m writing these final words in the ambience of my local coffee shop. In a serious slice of kismet, they are playing Portugal’s 2022 entry Saudade Saudade.
Saudade is a Portuguese concept which Wikipedia defines as an emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent someone or something.
This is not what the concept of saudade is usually linked to — and apologies to my Portuguese sisters and brothers for this! — but it’s not far off how I feel about Eurovision. It’s absent for most of the year, and I long for it. I feel intensely melancholic once it’s over. And always, I have a deep nostalgia for everything it represents, especially the memories it conjures of my European travels. Memories that are so intense, they can move me to tears.
These travels have often been the happiest times of my life, and I get to remember them every time a Eurovision song plays.
So, what is it like to be a Eurovision superfan? Well, you have the privilege of being a mass of memories and music all year long. And that is a privilege I will never take lightly.
What a wonderful, lovely tribute to your love of Eurovision. And I detest on people who crap on other people's love of things.
The first time I saw the Eurovision, I felt a similar emotion. Now that I live in Germany, I want to experience Europe as much as possible, absorb its culture--both good and bad.