More stuff you don't know about Europe

There is a huge cultural phenomenon over here called the Eurovision Song Contest (Wikipedia Article). Its like American Idol but bigger, more campy and contains the political intrigue of the League of Nations.

My rough summary is that each country gets to have 1 entry in the contest. The decision on what countries are 'Euro' enough to be in the contest is, as with so much here, unnecessarily complex and anachronistic. There is something about if your country doesn't get enough points you don't get to play the foll wing year. Also if your country is populated by mostly brown people, you only get to join every other year. Notably, Lebanon refused to participate because they didn't want to show the Israeli entry. The Middle East nations are like 7th grade girls arguing over who sits next to whom at lunch although more lethal (but if 13 year old girls had missiles it might be a wash).

Anyway, so your country has their representative they all get together for a huge concert and then each country votes a number of points to each song. Then they flip a 27 sided coin or something and then everyone appears to win. Most countries either recode their songs into English for the finals or well.....lose.

There is a drinking culture around the songs that people here call schlager. I think it means folk music but not sure. The point is that bars have schlager nights occasionally and they play the winning songs from the last 15-20 years all night and everyone knows the words and sings along. I must emphasize that they are bad, bad songs and one must drink to put up with them.

Check the site. I reccomend the Norway entry just based on their look.