As with the first part of this story, this second part is also dedicated to Franciska van Waarden (@Fairytale0126). Franciska, I’m not even sure I fully appreciate myself just how much I love you. Maybe one day I will realise.
And so, with tickets bought, now I could start formal planning for my first ever live Eurovision Song Contest experience. I had waited 6 years for this wonderful dream to come to life… and now it was. Loreen’s stunning victory in Baku had planted the seed for my Eurovision dream. I had moved one step closer to reality.
Copenhagen
Naturally, the first thing I did was find out where in Sweden Malmö is. I was pleasantly surprised when I found it that the city is so close to Denmark’s capital Copenhagen. Once I had located Malmö, the next thing was to start looking around for somewhere to sleep.
I initially played around with the idea of staying in Malmö itself, but soon realised that hotel rooms in the city during Eurovision week would be ridiculously over-priced and so that plan went in the bin pretty early. Lund in Sweden, a few miles from Malmö was another idea which I explored… but I’m not a small-town person and so that plan also had a line struck through it fairly early.
Which eventually led me to Copenhagen. The more I read about the city and realised it might be a viable option, the more I was sold on the idea of staying there for a few days. I knew about the city and its history, but there’s only so much you can read and believe without experiencing the real thing.
Danhostel Copenhagen City became my home during Eurovision 2013
In the end, Copenhagen won me over and, as luck would have it, I didn’t have to search for too long before I stumbled across Danhostel Copenhagen City – a huge youth hostel right in the very heart of the city. It was perfect for me… it was affordable and within easy reach of everything. It was home. My perfect dream was building beautifully. If it was a sense of adventure I was looking for, I was getting it. A love affair with Copenhagen was being born.
Flights
Tickets were bought and I had somewhere to stay. The next thing on my Eurovision ‘to do’ list was find flights… and boy did I find the right flights. I waited until January 2013 before finally booking my flights, but when I did I scored an Edinburgh to Copenhagen round trip with BMI Regional for £91.
The price was perfect and the flight times could not have been better for me (I flew out at 11:25am UK time and back at 10am Denmark time)… those are the little things that I look for in finding the right flights. I did it for Malmö and again for Copenhagen this year.
Once I had booked my bus from Dundee to Edinburgh (bearing in mind I was still living in Dundee at the time), that was it. There was nothing else to book… tickets, hostel, flights and a bus to get me to Edinburgh and back. Everything was in place and I was ready to go…
Copenhagen Calling 