eurovision 2005 win for GR

eurovision 2005
Originally uploaded by Dimitris Mazarakis.

Well, maybe it was about time to get a win this contest for once, in the 50 years that it has been taking place on an annual basis. Elena Paparizou did it for us :), with teh song titled "my number one". This means we are also hosting it nest year.

Am I happy? Yes. Most of us Greeks are. It's been a tremendous last year for our country in all that's related to our international presence in sports, culture, now this (in some ways kitch but some ways funny european tradition) contest.

But there are still certain things I don't enjoy:
1. The kind of culture on winning which is being promoted in my country. It's like we would be losers if we came back from Kiev without the 1st place. The goal should be that we have a good presence, this is no championship and when people vote from different countries, motives and criteria are subjective. I don't get the message promoted by our media that WE HAVE TO BE BETTER/reach #1 cos our song is better. Cos this message makes no sense to me. Sad to say that it does make sense to a few people I happen to know.
2. Some people already from yesterday dared to compare Eurovision with the Olympics as an event of simlar importance. I don't think this is worth a single minute of debate at all, in all levels of possible comparison. And I hope I don't see this debate happening in the media in the course of the next few days. Cos the Olympics stand for a lot more things than eurovision does, but unfortunately popular culture has the tendency of putting things of different sizes in the sides of the same equation.

For now lets just enjoy the victory :). congratulate Elena and hope to organise a good contest next year in Greece!