Salam! We’ve arrived in the Press Centre a little later than we’d planed (blame the free alcohol at the Welcome Party last night) but we are in time to see the Big 5 plus Azerbaijan do their second dress rehearsal. We’re particuarly looking forward to seeing France again, for rather obvious reasons!

Yesterday was rather a manic day with lots going on. The day got off to an excellent start with the rehearsal from Slovenia, and I got my first goosebumps moment in Baku. We popped along to the Slovenian press conference afterwards where we got to ask Eva about how she was enjoying her experience, which she is really enjoying. We were also treated to a few acapella performances from Eva and her backing singers, one of which was Molitva, which was written by the same people as Verjamem.

After the conference finished, we got a phone call from one of the volunteers saying that our interview request for Slovenia was accepted, so we went along and met the lovely Eva, the results of which you can see on our earlier post! Lots of people are saying that Eva is one of the nicest artists this year, and she really did impress us with her confidence and maturity.

One of the other highlights of the day was the French rehearsal, where we were treated to topless male acrobats! That certainly woke up the Press Centre! We got to give Anggun a present of a T-shirt with her Minipop Icon on it, and she gave a really great press conference where she told us that there is still a lot of work to do on their performance, but she is confident that they will get there! We also got a great impromptu performance from the acrobats!

Sadly we missed the Azerbaijan rehearsal as it clashed with the French press conference but we could heat Sabina’s vocals, and they sounded really impressive! A few people have tipped her to win so maybe we’ll be back in Baku next year? At least they have a venue ready now!

Yet again we had to miss the last few rehearsals to head back to get ourselves ready for the official opening party in EuroClub. After a rather eventful journey, due to most of the roads being blocked off, we finally made it to the venue just in time to see the last few acts arrive onto the red carpet including Gaitana, Pastora and Eva, who was the last to arrive! The party was really busy and ever so slightly unorganised – there was free wine and beer but no food, thankfully we had the sense to eat earlier. Loads of the artists came on stage to perform their Eurovision songs including Kurt Calleja, Rambo Amadeus and Eleftheria Eliftheriou, but Gaitana decided to perform a new track instead, and she gave an excellent performance! We mingled with some of the Eurovision stars, including Joan Franka, Kaliopi and Can Bonomo, and had a lovely chat with Sandra Feketija, who is the girl who does the “ah-ah” bits in the Slovenian song! Around 1.30am the beer and wine had run out, but we managed to find a bar downstairs in the restaurant area that still had drinks flowing! Quite a few people were moaning that it was worst welcome party ever, but we managed to have loads of fun despite there being no Eurovision music played, apparently because a DJ played Apricot Stone the night before! Hope they manage to sort this out for the rest of the week. So overall, a great day, an we’re now firmly in the Eurovision bubble!