Tonight is the Finals in the "Unser Star für Oslo 2010" (Our Star for Oslo 2010) televised contest in Germany. The winner will be Germany's entry into the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest being broadcast in May. Among some of the more notable careers that the contest has helped launch are ABBA, who performed Waterloo in 1974 and Céline Dion who performed "Ne partez pas sans moi" in 1988 oddly enough for Switzerland.
Germany is tried of finishing poorly for so long and they do some pretty creative things to win (or at least finish better). One of the first efforts that I'm aware of was that of ProSeiben personality Stefan Raab hosting a contest on one of his shows that resulted in Max Mutzke performing "Can't Wait Until Tonight" for Germany in the 2004 contest (note Max is performing this is song in the video embedded at the top of this post). This year ProSeiben and ARD have been airing a contest to determine who'll represent Germany in the 2010 Eurovision. While there are more and more music casting shows, this is first that is co-hosted on two different networks, with ARD being publicly run no less.
I remember seeing some of the promotion for Max when he was going to perform at Eurovision and getting excited about his song. The song was very catchy and sounded like something that Joe Cocker could have sung very well. I watched the 2004 Eurovision and realized that I had somehow gotten old and out of touch because most of the music being performed didn't appeal to me and I was surprised to see that Max didn't finish near the top. I had kind of written off the whole Eurovision experience off after that.
I didn't see the Unser Star Für Oslo from the beginning but came into it later on. I found it really refreshing that this was focused on people that could really sing and not creating drama and conflict. Clearly most anyone of the candidates could do a good job representing Germany. I've also enjoyed that the jury has not been overly critical, obscene, or uncivilized. Maybe the performances didn't lend themselves to those types of critiques but it has been nice not hearing any below the belt commentary.
Tonight it boils down to who will be representing Germany in Oslo this year, will it be Lena Meyer-Landrut or Jennifer Braun? I don't know if I'll be tuning into Eurovision this year or not, but it sure would be nice to see one of these two women win it. I'm looking forward to hearing some good music tonight.
Our Star for Oslo 2010 Final Tonight
Friday, March 12, 2010
Hobbit's Second Birthday
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Yesterday was Hobbit's second birthday. Its hard to believe that he is already two years old.
Having had dogs most of my life, those years without one seemed as though something was missing. My mother's last dog was a Bearded Collie that I was very fond of, so when I got my first dog I decided that I wanted to get a Bearded Collie because of him. 
Hobbit and his brothers and sisters
We were pretty excited when Hobbit was born (I think that I was more excited than everyone else!). That excitement built up to our first visit, then the first time that the girls got to see him, then there was all the anticipation of seeing how much he had changed from visit to visit, until the day finally arrived when we could pick him up and take him home.
When we did take Hobbit home the fun really began. It didn't take long before Hobbit was a full-fledged member of our family and it was hard to imagine life without him. Being a cute puppy made him pretty popular with the neighborhood kids. Six months, one year, and now two years have really flown by.
Hard to believe that Hobbit was ever this small!
Even as Hobbit is now two, he is still very much a puppy. He loves people and still wants to great everyone that he meets (which does scare some people). Although his black hair has turned gray, you wouldn't know that he isn't a puppy anymore. Having a dog or other pet can give you so much joy and happiness.
If you'd like to read more about Hobbit, I've written quite a bit about Hobbit at the DC Heron Family blog, posted some pictures at Facebook, and some pictures at Flickr. The drawing above is one I recently did of Hobbit and have posted to Flickr.
20th Anniversary of the Berlin Wall's Fall
Monday, November 9, 2009
Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell this was surely a watershed moment for mankind. Amongst other things this means that there is at least one generation of people alive today that have no recollection of a divided Germany and the Berlin Wall. How do you explain to them what had happened and how Germany was divided? The Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany recently tried to do just this as part of the Children's University 2009 Program in the topic "Eine Mauer in Deutschland- order: Eins plus eins ist eins!" (A Wall in Germany- One plus one is one!, in English)
I've attended two of the Kiddie Uni programs so far and have been quite please and plan on attending other in the future. Parents need to see if they think that the children are old enough to attend and if they'd be interested in the topics covered but they do a good job and it can be a fun an educational experience for your kids. They set up one lecture hall where the kids sit to take part in the topic while parents wishing to stay can view the lecture (and keep an eye on their kids) from another room as the event is televised and they pan to the kids from time to time (to ease the minds of the parents) and to get the reaction of the kids. It should be noted that the programs are in German
There was some explanation of how Germany was divided at the end of World War II, without a lot of detail about the war itself. Uncle Sam and Uncle Ivan played the parts of America and the U.S.S.R during the lesson. The kids were told about the freedoms that people had in West Germany and how the party decided what was best for the people in East Germany. They even made their own wall between the kids and dived them into East and West.
Uncle Sam passed out Gummi bears (something most all kids in Germany know and love) to the kids in West Germany, while the kids in the DDR didn't get any. You can imagine that this got a reaction out of the kids and some were ready to "defect" to get their Gummi Bears. There was genuine concern among their parents about if their kids were in the DDR or in the West, and you could see them looking intently to determine if their kids were in the DDR or not.
A little later on there were calls to tear down the wall and Uncle Ivan disappeared, while they told the kids about President Reagan's call to "Mr Gorbechev, tear down this wall..." the wall came down and all the kids got to have Gummi Bears. Gummi Bears for all.
In honor of the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, I'm playing Pink Floyd's "The Wall" on Blip.fm. I recently wrote an article about 19 Years of German Reunification And the Fall of the Berlin Wall 20 Years Later, if you'd like to read more about this topic.
Photo Credit: "American Sector" courtesy of Lietmotiv.
