It's that time of year again...

While G's mom was out to visit she got to experience one of the great annual events of Europe - the Eurovision Song Contest. Since 1956 the contest has been a European institution and this year 43 countries participated. The band ABBA was discovered after winning the contest for Sweden in 1974.

Basically, how the contest works is each participating country submits one song, which is performed live in a television program and the countries then proceed to cast votes for the other countries' songs: nations are not allowed to vote for their own song. It is sort of like a huge, multi-cultural "American Idol". On the night of the final there are Eurovision parties that are hosted by different bars all around town, but this year we watched the competition on television at home.

This years Eurovision Contest was hosted by Serbia. My vote went to Switzerland (of course), but in the end Russia was declared the winner. Though mocked by many for it’s over the top glitz, the contest is loved by its many followers and it is consistently one of the most watched television programs of the year. It's true, most of the performances were pretty cheesy (there was even a pirate song performed by a group from Latvia), but the Eurovision Contest is always a lot of fun!