With a good lead of 17 points Ruslana from the Ukraine won the 49th Eurovision Song Contest in the completely sold out Abdi Ipecki Arena. The well deserved second rank made Zelko from Serbia & Montenegro with 263 points, Sakis from Greece came third with 252 points. The host country received 195 points and got 4th. Germany made a good 8th place with 93 points. A fair result for Germany, as the competition was enormously high. Luckily there is no nil-points candidate, but Norway got last with 3 points from Sweden. All singers gave their best and the show was magnificent. The two hosts were not really funny. We noticed that lots western European countries ended up among the bottom field, eastern European countries gained the more. Belgium was one of the favorites, but only received 7 points and came 22nd. It's sad for Jonsi from Iceland, too - he came 19th only! The battle between Stefan Raab (Germany) and Ralph Siegel (Malta) was clearly won by Stefan Raab, Malta only came 12th with 50 points. However, the final participants for the final round of the 50th Eurovision Song Contest look as follows: Ukraine, Germany, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Serbia & Montenegro, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Sweden, Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Russia, Malta and Croatia.

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Tonight is the night! The biggest music show of the world will be broadcasted tonight at 21.00 CET and ends around midnight. This year there are 36 countries to give their votes, even if they are disqualified in the semi-final. The excitement is great. The winner is really unpredictable this year. This mega event holds 85.000 m cable for lightning and around 1.000 lamps. Tonight the show will be broadcasted live in 36 countries, but many other will watch it, too. In Australia it will be shown on Sunday night, there is a huge interest in Down Under. There is going to be a great Eurovision Party at Federation Square in Melbourne. Other countries - even from Europe - have no interest at all like Bulgaria. It won't be broadcasted and it looks like that Bulgaria will never ever take part in the competition, according to a Bulgarian journalist. There will be 100 million expected viewers, but there are more, in the arena there are 7.500 people, as well as on the Eurovision Parties in Hamburg, Madrid and Istanbul (Taksim square).

After a spectacular semi-final the new starting postions are fixed. Turkey presented itself from it's sunny side: great intro, beautiful landscapes, that's all animates to visit the exotic country at the Bosporus. Qualified are: Serbia & Montenegro (5th position), Malta (6th position), the Netherlands (7th position), Albania (9th position), Ukraine (10th position), Croatia (11th position), Bosnia & Hercegovina (12th position), Macedonia (15th position), Greece (16th position) and Cyprus (21st position). Surprisingly qualified are Albania and the Netherlands. Nobody expected them to qualify. But Albania received one of the biggest applauses. It appeared that the half of Albania's population was in the arena to support Anjeza. There were so many fans from Balkan countries busses over busses. Not qualified are countries with the lowest chances like Switzerland and Monaco - that was quite predictable. But sad for good contributions like Israel, Finland, Estonia and Portugal. Now there are three days left for sp eculations. Who is on stage before whom, is it advantage or disadvantage, how will the duell end between Stefan Raab (Germany) and Ralph Siegel (this year for Malta)? The competition is extremely high and unpredictable. This is the new Eurovision Song Contest. Two shows - dubble the fun and excitement.

Everybody who is going to the Abdi Ipeci Arena these day will have noticed the big security improvement. Since the terror attacks in November Turkey fears that it could happen again. Istanbul is hosting two big events on Wednesday and Saturday. To ensure the highest level of security for the delegations and journalists the security standards have been improved and there is more police around than ever. It's similar to an airport check in.

Today there was the first dress rehearsals of the semi-final. A lot of things went wrong, but there wasn't a big disaster. Some technical things of the normal procedure didn't work that well. The female singer of Belarus had a sore throat and she could not attend the rehearsal today. Instead there was one of the backing vocalists. Maryon from Monaco couldn't find the right tone today and Israel was a bit disappointing as well as Denmark - he was wearing red all over! On the other hand Malta had a superb performance, as well as Cyprus and Serbia & Montenegro which caused goose-bumps. The video clips between the song showed beautiful landscapes from Turkey. The interval act "The fire of Anatolia" is a fascinating drum spectacular.

The EBU hold an additional press conference today concerning the new double-show format of the contest. The telecommunication company Digame from Cologne, Germany is responsible for the televoting-procedure. As a little surprise there was a special ABBA-video-clip showing the four famous faces as little dolls in a wonderful animated story. This clip will be shown on Wednesday night in the semi-final. The EBU offered ABBA a very high fee to be on stage again, but they said "No". So we must take this video-clip as a last salutation-

Today Max from Germany could enter the stage. As always he was singing with closed eyes. "This voice is fantastic" was the main reaction in the audience during his first appearance on stage here in Istanbul. Honestly he really is great on stage and the atmosphere is touching - the stage looks beautifully and it's glooming like lava at the end. Max deserves a good ranking. The song is unusual for Eurovision but In a very positive way. But the competition is high and depending on who is qualifying for the final - think of the Ukraine and Greece - Max won't have it easy!

Today was the beginning the rehearsals for the finalists. The Spanish press conference has been visited quite well. The interest of the Spanish in the Eurovision Song Contest is still quite high after Rosa. That's why there are plenty of journalists from Spain again to support Ramon. The Austrians brought cakes to the press conference, but unfortunately they didn't share it with the journalists - instead they began to throw it to each other - and later on they included the journalists, too. That was new at Eurovision. The Turkish TV station TRT wasn't very pleased, they extra had to clean the mess and the other press conferences had to be rescheduled because of that. Every participant tries to utilize the full stage with all it's facilities to being kept in mind in a three minute presentation. France has a woman with stilts on stage and the background singers are dancing around a plastic globe - this song is perfectly suitable for the circus! Also Julia from Russia is doing some acrobatic exercises which look quite dangerous. They want Russia to be among the favourites and assure the good ranking of Russia in the past.

This year there are several folkloristic contributions. Some of them deserve a special consideration. Serbia & Montenegro presents one of the best songs since many years "Lane Moje". All the musicians are highly talented and showed it as much as possible. For the time being last press conference of the country, the team played the finest traditional music and Zeljko played the accordion. The background singers and musicians sang a special song, sung many centuries ago in the Hagia Sofia. Totally different, but very originally are the Estonians. They are presenting their home country music full of energy and passion to a big international audience. Neikoso already appeared in Warsaw during the EU-expansion celibrities and convinced with this very special song. Last year Belgium also send an ethno-song to the Eurovision Song Contest and got second at the end. Especially the different and untypical songs make the contest so interesting and unique. You can't find it in any other music show like this in the Euro vision Song Contest.

One of the most extraordinary performances comes from the Ukraine. Ruslana was able to show all her talent in today's rehearsal. The show was really impressive and showed authentic wild dances with an atmosphere of it's own. Comparable with the winning song "Everyway that I can" by Sertab last year. The dancers shake their long hair and swing their whips to the rhythm. The following press conference was really special and Ruslana made lots of jokes with the press and her delegation - she succeeded and the audience loved her. But also Sarkis from Greece showed a real sexy performance with a little touch of Zirtaki dance. Greece as well as the Ukraine probably will reach the final easily measured on these great shows.

For the first time in Eurovision history Turkey is hosting the contest. This is a big task for the country on the Bosporus. 36 countries participate. This great amount of countries does not fit in a three hours show, so that's why there is going to be held a qualifying round on Wednesday May 12th May of those countries who didn't shape up well last year and those who even didn't participate. The ten best of the 22 countries will qualify for the final on Saturday 15th May. In the final there will be the ten best from last year, the, the host country and the big four (Germany, United Kingdom, France and Spain) who are paying the highest contribution to the EBU. The organizer is hoping for a higher excitement and more interest in the show.

Since today the rehearsals and press conferences have started. There were some difficulties like the press centre and the stage havn't been finished yet. It is expected that it's going to be more exciting from tomorrow on. Not all of the participants and delegations have arrived in Istanbul.

Secret Garden are on their "Oceana" Tour visiting Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. They gave four concerts called "A Night with Secret Garden" in Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne and Sydney. The highlight for Fionnuala Sherry and Rolf Lovland was a performance at Sydney Opera House. On Thursday night the concert hall was sold out completely - the audience consisting mainly of Australians, but also many from Ireland and Scandinavia - young and old. Secret Garden are well known in Europe because of their victory at the Eurovision Song Contest 1995 in Dubin. They took home victory for Norway with a song called "Nocturne" - a song almost without lyrics but with a beautiful instrumental score.

The music of Secret Garden is more for the ear than for the eye - however the stage offered lots to look at. Fionnuala appeared in a green glittering top and later in a beautiful lime-green glittering dress. She, Rolf and the band gave their best - there were dance performances and light effects - everything altogether created a magnificent atmosphere in a show that wasn't shown anywhere else in the world so far. The audience was especially impressed by faster, more rhythmical pieces like "Fairytale". There were a lot of material played from Secret Garden's new album "Once In A Red Moon" as well as three brand new compositions like "The Reel", which received huge applause and standing ovations. This song was played a second time as a final encore.

Secret Garden are very proud of taking part and winning the Eurovision Song Contest. They have shown how much winning the Contest can help gaining an international career and how much successful a Eurovision winner can be. The albums of Secret Garden were sold over 300 million times and the new song "You Raise Me Up" is currently No. 1 in the US contempory Billboard Charts - for three weeks already! Even superstar Barbra Streisand was fascinated by Secret Garden's music, not only did she record one of their songs on one of her albums ("I Dreamed Of You"), she also asked them to play their music at her wedding in California.

"Nocturne" was also played as an encore. Finniuoula pointed out that this was one of her life's very special moments, playing this song at Sydney Opera House.

The Turkish television TRT and the EBU had previously chosen the Mydonose Showland - a tent-venue on an island in the Bosporus. But due the high number of spectators the organisers had to change the venue to the Abdi Ipekci hall which can hold about 8,000 people. This year's motto is called "Under the same sky" for there will be 36 European Stars, which are united here in Istanbul.

Meltem was born in 1970 in Izmir, Turkey. She graduated from University, worked as an actress for the Shakespeare Company in London. She is now a very popular artist in Turkish theatre and film and she will be the beautiful female hostess for the upcoming 49th Eurovision Song Contest in Istanbul.