John Mitchbryson (Part Two)

Having settled into my room on the first day, I set off for a bit of a walk. I should think that most visitors to Copenhagen who start at the main train station would walk east, seeing as that’s where you find the shops, the tourist sites and pretty much everything else. That’s what I’ve done too on my two previous visits to Copenhagen. But this time I decided to go west, to – as in the grand tradition of Tilly, Tom and Tiny – see what I could see. I split that infinitive big time.

It was fascinating to walk through parts of the city I’d never seen before and that not many tourists would get to see. After I’d been walking for a little while, I heard fantastic music coming from somewhere. Fantastic gospel music. I turned the corner and – wouldn’t you know – it was coming from...The Salvation Army. It sounded so good. They’d left the front doors open (a great idea), so I went up and had a little look in to see a big gospel concert and what looked like a full hall. Lots of people stopped to listen as they walked by. I’m convinced that gospel music is the way forward (certainly not at the expense of other styles – but I’m still planning to get that gospel choir up and going in the new year!) and if I hadn’t already decided I was going to go to a different Salvation Army corps on the Sunday, I would have gone there.

The Saturday of my time in Copenhagen also happened to be the Saturday of the Eurovision Song Contest. Those of you who visit this blog regularly (and those of you who don’t read this blog regularly, but are reading this line) will be aware that I’m a bit of a Eurovision fan (see here and here and here), but I’ve been very good and not said very much about it this year... I’ll sum up my thoughts with a few bullet points:

* Poland must be a very sunny country;

* The winner from Russia achieved new levels of self-adoration. I’m fairly sure that if it was announced that I’d won the Eurovision Song Contest, the first thing I would do would not be to take my shirt off (I’d probably be quite surprised, because I’ve never entered). The song was... alright, but every second it went on it became more and more tacky. And was he singing about Lee Mead? (‘There is not a Lee Mead to what I can do’?) If so, extra points for mentioning an Essex celebrity;

* What was interesting this year is that instead of the usual male-female presenting team, this year’s male presenter was accompanied by a cyborg. A cyborg who also welcomed us to the Belgrade;

* Norway recovered from what can only be described as a truly horrific opening lyric to become a great song. It had my money;

* The interval acts were in keeping with the grand tradition of Eurovision interval acts and sucked. One man seemed to be singing about gas;

* I had the choice of Swedish, Danish and German commentary, so I did a bit of switching as the evening went on. The highlight was the lack of Terry Wogan on any of them :)
While waiting for Eurovision to start I had a little walk around Tivoli Gardens. In all honesty it took me nearly half an hour to find my way out again.Part Three to follow...