| Eurovision Song Contest News - 2008 Belgrade, Serbia 

vatroslav markus

Greetings, my friends! Lijep pozdrav, prijatelji, as we would say in Croatian!

I come from Croatia, the middle-sized european country and also the most beautiful of the world... ..., a lot of you, who were here are convinced it is true, I am sure) :-)
I watch ESC since 1990 (as you probably know, it was held in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia), and since then I missed just two editions (Stockholm 2000 and Kiev 2005 :-( ...). I won't describe myself as "the Eurosong fanatic", but it is very hard to express which eddition of Euro Song Contest would the best for me....every single had something special, something important, something unique...I have never visited the ESC, but I would like to (waiting for Croatia to be the host, hehehehe)!

I want to say that I don't like only the ESC countries, which I listed down there, so I hope that the people who are from the other countries, which aren't on "my" list, won't be offended!

My favourite ESC songs are ( by the chronological order):

1. Vicky Leandros (Apres toi), represented Luxembourg in 1972.,
2. Mocedades (Eres tu), represented Spain in 1973.
3. ABBA (Waterloo), represented Sweden in 1974.,
4. Riva (Rock Me), represented Yugoslavia in 1989.,
5. Carola (Fangad av en stormvind), represented Sweden in 1991.,
6. Secret Garden (Nocturne), represented Norway in 1995.,
7. Dana International (Diva), represented Israel in 1998.,
8. Doris Dragovic; (Marija Magdalena), represented Croatia in 1999.,
9. Sertab Erener (Everyway I can), represented Turkey in 2003.
10. Helena Paparizou (My number one), represented Greece in 2005.

I also like when every country performs its entry on its national language, because in that case you can hear and feel such varieties of the beautiful european (and some asian) languages. I find it fascinating!
I like the most of croatian entries since 1993 and I am very proud of the fact that Croatia performed every year since 1993, because it shows the quality of our music and songs. I am also very proud of the success my country had in ESC in passed years (6 th place in 1995, 4 th place in 1996 and 1999, 5 th place in 1998, 10 th place in 2000 and 9 th in 2001), I hope we will come back into the TOP 10 very soon!
I really hope that some countries, which took part in the past and withdrew, will be back soon (Italy, Luxembourg, Slovakia etc....), because they had beautiful and quality songs during their performing on the ESC!

Well, it is all for now, for further informations, please contact me on my e-mail:
vatroslav.markus@vt.t-com.hr

I expect your messages soon!

God bless you!

Vatroslav