Eurovision, parties and Royalty

Hi Everyone,

Where else could I live except in a country that is fanatical about Eurovision? Romania just loves it. In the UK the semi finals are shown on BBC3. Here they are on their main national station TVR1 live both evenings. They way they choose their entry song takes up a month of Saturday evenings. This country is serious about Eurovision.

And at the same time they are incredibly naive about it. They were astounded when I predicted, correctly of course, that Romania would give the Republic of Moldova 12 points and Moldova would give Romania 12 points. At the Eurovision party I went to in a friends house there was wailing, sack cloth and ashes, tears and curses being called down on countries that failed to give Romania any points. That meant a lot of countries are now cursed. In fact most of them! The Romanians were convinced that they stood a good chance of winning. Unfortuantely the only allies they had in their view were the inhabitants of the local deaf, blind and dumb institute. After a long evening they were disgusted that the great musical nation of Romania was 19th. And they would have been a lot lower if Moldova had not voted.

That evening was a hectic one. Earlier we went to the Athenaeum (a truely spectacular orante and beautiful concert hall) for a concert entitled Spring Flavours by the George Eminescu orchestra. This lovely two hour concert of various well known pieces was due to start at 6.30pm. Finishing at 8.30 was perfect to get to the start of Eurovision party at 9.00. However this is Romania. So the audience were allowed into the hall at 6.25pm, an indication that promptness and good timekeeping is not a Romanian virtue. And so we waited in our seats. Beautiful concert hall......really nice......oh look there's someone we know.......have a chat with them.....sit down again......mmm, lovely concert hall......oh there's so and so.....have a chat with them.....sit down once more.......concert hall is still very pretty.......WHEN WILL IT START??????? 50 minutes later was the answer! Being British, this sort of slap dash, whenever approach drives me up the wall.

In the end the concert finished at 9.40pm. So we had to do a Michael Schumacher across the city to arrive just in time for the start of Eurovision. But just before that, at the end of the concert there was the inevitable encore. The conductor came out to lead one more piece when one of the ladies in the orchestra walked to the front of the stage. She started speaking and we thought she was either introducing the last musical piece or paying tribute to the conductor. She said:
"I want to warn you all. This is a very dangerous time for Romania. We are all going to die. Everybody in Romania will die...."
The conductor just stood there smiling. But the first violinist interrupted her:
"We have heard this before from you" she said
"And you work for the KGB" said the strange woman before leaving the stage still shouting her warnings. Very bizzare.

The very second the performances finished on Eurovision we raced off to a friend's birthday party. During the party I kept being updated by messages to my mobile phone from 3 different friends on how the voting for Eurovision was going. Not that I am fanatical about Eurovision you understand.

In the middle of the following week I had a difficult decision. HRH Prince Charles was on a private visit to Romania - he owns a house and land in Transylvania which he visits about once a year. But the Embassy gets involved in all the arrangements, even though it is essentially a private visit. Prince Charles landed in Bucharest at 16.20, by 17.00 he was meeting the President of Romania at Cotroceni Palace, by 17.50 he was meeting the Prime Minister at Victoria Palace and then at 18.30 he was at the Ambassador's residence for tea with some guests. At 19.20 he flew by helicopter to Transylvania. And that was it. Apart from returning by helicopter to Bucharest and transferring straight to his British Airways flight 2 days later, that was our involvement. But it took a team of about 12 people weeks and weeks of planning, meetings, inspections, trial runs etc etc to prepare for this. I was involved in that and so the Ambassador promised that all those involved would have a chance to meet Prince Charles at the short garden party at the Residence. Unfortunately it coincided with the biggest celebrity party of the year in Romania, the annual VIVA! Party (organised by Tiberiu of course).

Well the choice was not very difficult really.....I went to the VIVA! Party.......but of course I told everyone that I had had to stand up Prince Charles to attend this! Well it's not often you can say that! Anyway, because Tibi was so busy with the party I arrived with a friend of ours, Marius Nedelcu, who was in a boy band called Akcent but is now following a solo career. Arriving with him in his sports car and walking down the red carpet with all the photographers shouting (things like "Get out the way old man let us see Marius") was better than shaking the hand of the man who has waited the longest in history to inherit the throne and ended up marrying a horse.

Well that's enough from me. Apart from to say that after 10 days of the temperature in Bucharest being above 28c they are forecasting 35c (94F) for the next couple of days. More about the weather in the next episode including the biggest storm Bucharest has seen for many years, a trip to Sibiu to visit some lovely people who insisted on force feeding me every minute of the day and the big event of the year for the Embassy - the Queen's Birthday Party.

All the best

Take care.

Andrew