Why Globen is the best choice for 2016

The news broke this morning: EBU and SVT announced that Stockholm would be the host of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest. Relief and disbelief dominate the Eurovision world. Was Stockholm the right choice? Would SVT not have made a better choice with cities like Gävle or Göteborg hosting? Nah, I don't think so. So here's ten reasons why Stockholm, and especially Globen, is the perfect venue for Eurovision 2016. Stockholm lives, some other cities... don't It's a fact that some cities have a buzzing nightlife, some cities are simply the place to be. Stockholm - if you know your way, it surely can be a buzzing city with an amazing nightlife. Other cities however.... Apparently, the picture above is one of Malmö's 'busiest and most vibrant epicentres for parties', according to a travel guide I found here... Möllan. Nice and vibrant, huh? Now compare that to Stockholm's Stureplan above... Now that is more like it! More entries go Direkt till Globen Oh how I've missed the phrase. Direkt till Globen. A sentence no one expected Björn Ranelid and Sara Li to ever get told, but they surprised many with their Mirakel of qualifying. Direkt till Globen. http://makeameme.org/media/created/direkt-till-globen.jpg We've had to miss it for a few years, but finally we'll get all Eurovision entries going Direkt till Globen! The iconic phrase will return to the Eurovision world and will become a European phrase more than just a Melodifestivalen thing, where we now hear the disappointingly boring 'Direkt till finalen'. We're hoping for about forty Direkt till Globens, I'm guessing... Much easier to get to Stockholm than to... Örnsköldsvik? Örnsköldsvik was one of the cities who apparently put in a bid to host Eurovision. After wondering where on earth I could find this lovely smaller city in Sweden, the next question would have been how to actually get there. It's not as easy as I thought... We tried looking for flights from London to Örnsköldsvik... Over 400 airlines and none fly from anywhere near London (Gatwick, Heathrow, you name it) to Örnsköldsvik... You could however possibly fly to Umeå and take a train from there, but that would cost you at least another hour... It's much easier - and cheaper - to get to Stockholm... Three flights on 1st May, a return including taxes and fees for less than £150. Can you really complain about that? I wouldn't. And the cheapest is rated as the best flight as well! At least we can't drown in space in Globen... Do you know that feeling when a venue just feels way way too big? Where you could literally have a ballroom dance on your own because you simply have the space to do it? We won't have that in Globen, thankfully! http://www.etnow.com/images/general/news/large/76877510_7147.jpg Looking back on Düsseldorf in 2011, there really was a lot of space... I mean, I know people want their space, but this was a bit much... Globen on the other hand has enough space to host 15,000 people and doesn't come across as a sea of space. Just about right! There's an ABBA Museum in Stockholm Winning the Eurovision Song Contest, becoming one of the most successful pop acts ever, becoming one of the few Eurovision winners to make it big - ABBA have done it all. And now they've got their own museum. In Stockholm. http://yourlivingcity.com/stockholm/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/abba-museum-stockholm.jpg Do we need to say anything else after that picture? They even have the outfits ABBA wore at the Eurovision Song Contest 1974. Their winning outfits, right in a hall with ABBA records, other ABBA outfits and whatever else you'd connect to ABBA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FsVeMz1F5c We're having Eurovision in the world's biggest Köttbullar Don't we all know the legendary IKEA meatball, the Köttbullar? Haven't we all visited IKEA to finish our trip through Billy, Aläng and Norrviken by sitting down in their buffet restaurant with a plate of köttbullar, some mysterious cream sauce and the insufferable lingonberry jam? Now compare these (almost) round meatballs, frozen and almost white, to the Eurovision venue... http://static.local-hero.org/images/venues/stockholm_globe_arena_big.jpg Striking similarity, I'd say... Magnus Carlsson can finally meet us in Gamla Stan Good old Magnus Carlsson was dying to meet us in Gamla Stan during this year's Melodifestivalen. Unfortunately, we were all going to focus on Vienna, so too bad for Magnus, none of us had time for this tours through Stockholm's Gamla Stan. Good news for him for 2016! We're off to Stockholm, so we can finally meet him in his favourite Gamla Stan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzQVq1kpms Seeing Eurovision evolve over the years... Back in 2000, we already visited Globen. The venue was chosen to host the contest back then and came up with a funky logo with lips and blurred flags and an interesting stage with five random pilars. This is how the stage looked for the Swedish entry that year. Pyrotechnics! Not a bad stage, but very 2000s. Especially those lips. Now, this was the stage in Vienna this year: It will definitely be interesting to see how the Eurovision Song Contest has evolved stage-wise. Will we see a big stage with all sorts of possibilities, like in the past few years? It's quite easy to get to Globen Some of you may remember the horrors of getting to Copenhagen's ghost house, also known as B&W Hallerne. Reports of travel times over an hour to get to this industrial island somewhere in parts of Copenhagen no one ever visited anymore. Now check out travel times from Stockholm's central station to Globen: Ten minutes is all it takes you to get from the train station to Globen. And right next to Globen is the press centre and all you'd need! Just ten minutes. Eat that, Copenhagen. We can keep the bridge theme going... Last but not least: Bridges! DR already put up a sign in 2013 saying they were going to cross the bridge from Malmö to Copenhagen and they did by Emmelie de Forest's victory. When we actually crossed that bridge for 2014, they kept telling us about it, bridge here, bridge there. And then Austria followed with their slogan: Building Bridges. We even got a theme song called Building Bridges. Bridges everywhere. And now we're in Stockholm... I count seven bridges on this picture alone. And there are about fifty other bridges in Stockholm. The old name for Magnus's favourite part, Gamla Stan, is 'Staden mellan broarna' - The city between bridges. All in all: Plenty of bridges to keep our theme going and plenty of reasons why Globen Arena is definitely the best choice to host the Eurovision Song Contest 2016!

Nick van Lith

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