Malmö memories to last a lifetime – part 8…

This, the penultimate part in the story of my Eurovision 2013 journey to and from Malmö is dedicated to my dear Eurovision friends, Franciska van Waarden (@Fairytale0126) and Mila Kovalj (@LoreenatorDK). 

Franciska, there is nothing to say about you that I haven’t already said. I love you. Mila, I was never meant to have so much fun in your country’s capital… but like so many chapters of my life, it was one of those things that ‘just happened’. You and I will have memories to last forever this year. I love you.

Friday May 17th 2013 is a day that will go down in personal history for me. It’s a day that I will always look back at with a mixture of great fondness and great sadness.

Edinburgh

As I woke at 5am, ready for my 10:30am return flight to Edinburgh and still wearing the bruises from my heavy fall at Tivoli on the Wednesday, I got a quick breakfast down me before checking out of Danhostel Copenhagen City (where I had slept the past 4 days) and making the now-familiar walk between there and Københavns Hovedbanegård (Copenhagen Central) to take the train out to Copenhagen Airport.

The spacious concourse at Copenhagen Central train station

On the way to the train station, I took the opportunity to get those last few mental shots of Copenhagen and to breathe in the Danish air one last time. Malmö had given me so many wonderful memories, but in the 4 days I had spent in Copenhagen I had fallen in love with the city. Every article I had read about Copenhagen, every thing that I had been told about the city… it had all been so true – and more. Copenhagen had thrown open its arms to me and I grasped the invitation – and that’s something I will never, ever forget.

Flight

The flight back to Edinburgh was horrible – but in a good way. I wanted to stay in Copenhagen, I didn’t want this beautiful Eurovision dream to end, but I knew it would have to.

As the plane took off and I said my final goodbyes to my new-found love, in a way I was glad to be going home. I had a wonderful time in Copenhagen and Malmö, but 4 days away from home was long enough – especially in 2 countries I had never been to before.

Arriving back in Edinburgh was fine, I had time to kill before my bus home to Dundee and so, as with the outward trip, I grabbed a coffee before the bus. I left Denmark at 10:30am CET and arrived home at around 4pm GMT. My body had done 7+ hours across 2 time zones, but at last I was home.

Appreciate

I was a different person when I got home. I had learned more than ever to appreciate the true beauty of the Eurovision Song Contest that I had grown up loving and one day dreaming of being at. I had finally lived that dream… and loved every last second of it.

Little did I know on that Friday that when Grand Final Saturday came round the following day I would be planting the seed for a return trip to Copenhagen…

Malmö memories to last a lifetime – part 2…

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…