Walking the streets in Ukraine

Not a lot to report today, but accreditation has successfully been picked up and the hotel room-venue journey timed, meaning tomorrow morning will bring with it effortless and stress-free travel!

It's just four stops on the metro from the city centre to the International Exhibition Centre, so the logistics are pretty easy. And a single ticket on the metro costs about 15 eurocents, so little to complain about there!

This afternoon's activities involved having a lot of sushi for lunch, doing a very small amount of sightseeing, and sitting drinking coffee. It's a hard life.

The first morning of rehearsals tomorrow will no doubt mean some kind of issue with something or other at the press centre. Most likely there won't be sound on the monitors for the first run through of the first rehearsal, but luckily it's Sweden and we already know exactly what we're getting there.

I morgon är en annan dag.

Congratulations, I have arrived.

OK, so I'm not Silvia Night. A little bit of me would quite like to be though.

Initial impressions of Kiev: Efficient airport, sunny blue skies, warm weather. I think I'll stay for a couple of days.

The first thing the taxi Uber driver said to me as we drove away from the airport was: "The traffic in the city will be chaos because of this, you know, Eurovision." "Ah yes, that," said I. "Nice weather you have here."

Next thing I noticed was a chain of petrol stations called Wog. If only they knew (or maybe they do?).

So far so good, and laissez briller le soleil.

On my way

Well that seems like a suitable enough, Eurovision 2017-related subject matter. I can't promise every post in the next couple of weeks will be equally on point.

But yes, I am Kiev-bound and ready to wriggle my way back into the rehearsal bubble for the first time since, erm, Vienna. And that really only feels like the other day. Was there a contest last year? Who won?

My mission is to bring you insightful and witty observations as the rehearsals start to unfold, and I'm already trying to think of a whole range of ways to say "the stage is blue": Hopefully I won't be out of ideas by Sunday tea time.

And should the history book on the shelf decide to repeat itself - as per the ancient Swedish proverb - there might be a haiku or two. But also there might not be. You'll just have to keep coming back to the blog to check.

But now, to misquote Mélanie René, it's time to fly.

Some last minute thoughts and predictions

It's been two long weeks already, and yet they've passed by very quickly. Lots of time has been spent in the press centre watching rehearsals, especially the first week, and lots of time has been spent running around between different events. Via this blog, via Twitter and via Instagram reports, photos and a little bit of everything has been shared with you guys. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as we have! Even though I have to admit I have felt rather drained of energy now towards the end of the Eurovision period.

Now as the final approaches, we shall soon find out who won. We'll also know the full result both of the final as well as the semifinals. As I said long ago, I wouldn't be attempting to do a lot of predictions this year. Because I'm always terrible at making predictions. But right now I'm gonna attempt to make a few anyway. Even if only for the sake of your entertainment, and then you can all laugh at me when it all turns out to be completely wrong.

So, here we go...

* The contest will be won by either Australia or Russia.

* Armenia and Ukraine will be top 5. Possibly joined by Sweden.

* Germany will be the worst-placed song of the Big 5.

* France will not win, but still do better than a lot of people think. I would guess mid top 10.

* Malta will do a lot better with jury votes than with tele votes. So will the Netherlands. But both for completely different reasons.

* The interval act will take even more time than scheduled.

* Belgium was top 3 in it's semifinal, but will only make top 10 in the final.

* Bosnia was 11th in it's semifinal. Iceland was 13th.

* Sweden will give it's jury 12 to Australia.

* At least half of the juries giving their 12 to Russia will mention Sergey by name while doing so. Very likely accompanied by words like "Talented", "You deserve it" and "You are our only one".



That's all :-) Enjoy the show, wherever you are watching it!

Final prediction

Okay, it's time. Time to put my money where my mouth is (well, not really, I'll be hopping over to Betfair to do that in a bit). But here goes, here's my final prediction for the results of this year's contest.

And the winner is...

1. Australia - I have to admit that I wasn't fully convinced by this on Thursday, but everyone else seems to be, it seems to selling well across Europe and it's both jury and televote-bait. So I'm putting this on top.
2. Sweden - I've had them on top for much of the season, and maybe it's the bloggers talking me out of it, but I'm knocking it down to second now.
3. Russia - I never really saw this as a winner, and Tuesday's performance only confirmed my feelings.
4. Latvia - I would love love love this to win. Pretty please?
5. Ukraine
6. Armenia
7. Serbia
8. Italy
9. Azerbaijan - Samra seems to be singing just well enough when combined with her backing vocalists, and it looked fabulous on Tuesday.
10. Bulgaria - I'd originally had them in the Top 10 before rehearsals, then took them out after reports... And now when I made my ranking now, they just slipped in.

11. Netherlands - not doing as well as I'd expected, and the early draw hits this one hard
12. France
13. Israel
14. Austria - it's been lovely seeing some commenters who were quite vitriolic about how Zoe had no chance, what with singing in French and all, totally eating their words now - surprisingly enough, only after her good result in the semi, rather than after they'd seen the same performance in rehearsals.
15. Poland - not deserved, but diaspora...
16. Malta
17. Georgia - still loved by the press, I strongly believe it'll get its share of votes from its fans, but that that won't be enough for it to climb any higher.
18. Cyprus
19. Hungary
20. Belgium - I think first is a horrible draw for this, and it's going to get forgotten.
21. Lithuania
22. Spain - I'm still convinced this is doing badly, despite reports that the crowd in the jury rehearsal loved it.
23. UK - much like Spain, they seem to be charming the cameras and the crowd in the hall alike. This is, the UK always seems to come across 'surprisingly well' in rehearsals, and then it almost never actually translates into a decent finish.
24. Croatia
25. Czech Republic - finally everyone seems to have noticed how staggeringly dull this is.
26. Germany