Election Day in Iceland
by Maria Pangoli -
Jun 05, 2010
This May bank holiday weekend Alex and I went to Iceland. We had booked the holiday break long time ago before the volcano ash cloud hit the news and we were very curious to see what all the fuss was all about plus we always like the Nordic countries and their peculiar inhabitants. For starters Icendair is much more than expected and I have been in the airline industry for a while, very nice crew, plenty of legroom and good entertainment (romcom inbound and outbound – what more can a girl ask for ...). Then the magical landscape, the Geysers, the food, the Blue lagoon, the fashion just fantastic and really feels like being on another planet. We’ll go back as soon as we can. Then when we arrived at the hotel to find it was overbooked our luck got us the vip treatment we all deserve and we were escorted in a better and very funky design hotel (some sculpture faces on the wall with water running over them, all leather furniture – crocodile, snake and wild animals prints). Yes, it was Election Day for the local government and all over town you would find the election posters of the most popular candidate: a picturesque and very healthy looking red head lady dressed in an attractive burgundy voile dress. It took me one day to understand that the popular advertised lady was not running for the election but for a much bigger run: Eurovision. Not long before we had elections in the UK and the television and papers were just monopolising the entire space for the elections. It looked like there was nothing else to talk about. In Iceland it looked the biggest call was winning the song contest and on the night really nobody was following the exit polls. It was quite something to watch. They say that 90 % on the Icelandic population watches Eurovision, well I can support the statement and I am happy I was there to see it. The cheers when the points were allocated, I found all this particularly entertaining and if there is any Eurovision fan out there reading this well next year go and see Eurovision in Iceland. Needless to say that UK came last..AGAIN. And by the way...who won the Icelandic elections in the end?
