It's Time To Talk About Malmo

I know things are very quiet at the moment. I know I should still be posting a little more than I am but sometimes in life you've just got to accept that. Put simply things are quite for the summer and that probably will not change until October or November. But in the mean time it's time to take a look at the city that is Malmo.

Malmo, as everyone now knows was announced as the surprise host of ESC 2013. While many fans will be familiar with Stockholm, Malmo is somewhat unknown territory. So what do we known about Malmo?

• Malmo is the third largest city of Sweden.  
• It has a a population of more than quarter of a million people. 30% of the population are non-Swedish. 
• The economy is largely traditional historically being a shipbuilding city. Construction is a major employer. During the financial difficulties in the early 90's in Sweden, Malmo was the worst hit city in Sweden for unemployment.
• The economy is largely integrated with Copenhagen. 10% of the population work in Copenhagen. They commute over the large bridge spanning between the two cities.
• Women are allowed to be topless in public swimming pools on the grounds that men are not told to cover up their upper bodies and men can have bigger breasts than women. 
• Football and Ice Hockey are the two main sports of Malmo. However they have a GAA club! They won the Scandinavian championship.

 I'm going to leave it there for now but more facts to come!

Reaction: Malmo to host ESC 2013

In what can be best described as one of the most shocking decisions to come from Eurovision organisers in many years SVT has announced that Malmo is to host Eurovision 2013. Malmo is Swedens third largest city and is in very close proximity to Copenhagen. The city has a 15,500 seat stadium to hold Eurovision.

This decision has been greeted with some surprise over in Sweden. Many Swedes see this as an opportunity to share hand over part of the contest to Denmark. I'm not entire sure what to make of all of this. On one hand I can understand the EBU's wish to have the contest in a smaller city and in general break the cycle of trying to beat last year's contest. However I thought that Sweden would have been less agreeable to this. I still will be interested to see what happens and if any more reasons come in relation to the choice. [I'm expecting some more detail as to why the Friends Arena failed].

I've nothing against Malmo, whatsoever. In fact this would make the possibility of me being able to attend the contest even more possible. [It still is a long shot]. I'll put up a fact sheet about Malmo in due course.

New Singles and Videos!

So with virtually no news of Eurovision of late, we turn to the follow up singles and videos that come in the mist of Post Eurovision Depression.

Elferia Elferiou [or something like that] from Greece has released her song Hearts Collide. The song is a bit hollow for the average northern European but it is a good summer song.

As, in similar news Loreen has released the video of Euphoria which is sort of what I expected, as Loreen is keen not to link the song with relationships/love/normal Eurovision topics in my opinion and the video reflects that. A link to the video is here.