Turkey

Hadise returned to Belgium happy with the results, and she talked to a news agency in Turkey.  Three weeks ago, she achieved 4th place in the Eurovision Song Contest 2009.

Eurovision Song Contest winner Alexander Rybak is popular in both the Netherlands and Belgium. De Toppers is doing well on the Dutch chart and in Belgium Hadise is on both the ones from Flanders and Wallonia, although the two charts are very different.

Much interest in the voting for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest centered on the introduction of juries in each country to vote alongside the public phone vote.

The results of both semifinals have now been released by the EBU. They make interesting reading. The jury overturned the telephone vote to save countries in each of the semifinals. Quite annoying if your country finished 10th in the phone vote.

In a contest which nobody could call close, Norway won the 54th Eurovision Song Contest in the Olympiyskiy Arena in Moscow. He scored a record 387 points, leaving him a long way in front of Iceland and Azerbaijan in second and third places respectively.

After months of finals, gossip and rumours, the time fans had been waiting for had finally arrived. The first semifinal was held tonight hosted by Andrey Malakhov and Natalia Vodianova. Eighteen songs were competing for ten places in the final, one of which would be decided by juries around Europe.

Today saw the start of the second round of rehearsals. Thirteen countries from the first semifinal rehearsed again, and also gave press conferences.