Malmö!
Yes Malmö has won the three way “contest” between the capital Stockholm, Gothenberg in the west of Sweden, and itself. The city’s Hartwall Arena, which houses 15,500, considerably less than Baku’s Crystal Hall, will play host to Europe’s annual festival of song.
Found in 1275 when that part of Sweden fell under Danish rule, the city was originally called Malmhaug, which rather charmingly means “gravel pile”. At one time, it was Denmark’s second largest city, with a flourishing herring industry to its name.
These days, the city, now renamed Malmo, is the third largest in Sweden after the capital and Gothenberg and crucially for everyone popping over from Europe is right on the southern tip of the country, located a mere 32 minutes from Denmark by train, according to this post on eurovisionfamily.tv by Daniel Doyle, who correctly picked Malmo as the “winning” city.
I imagine that it will have one very busy train station comes May 14-18 next year!
