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Accreditation center

Andy on Sat, 05/02/2009 - 23:01

Well, I guess almost all have already reported on that but the first day of the Accreditation Center for Eurovision-2009 has been unprecedented example of kindness and hospitality of the Muscovites and guests of the capital, returning us to the glorious times of Soviet Union. The prevailing majority of foreigners received their portion of the pleasure being made to stand in a long queues with volunteers and other staff of the contest, while organizers usually fail to warn, especially in English, that press can enter accreditation center directly, avoiding any queues. Even if you manage to get the news, you had to face the security, demanding for some reasons the press card, which actually was not required for accreditation itself, but only to enter the building for some reason. How it worked: two minutes of shouting (which will seem to be the usual way of handling the things in Moscow) and they will allow you to enter without press-card.

The handling of accreditations in another story. We're still in pre-computer times, sorry. There have been just 1 or 2 girls dealing with press-accreditations, which have been put into alphabet boxes, there might be two boxes with M - M1 and M2 and the order inside the boxes is chaotic. So, prepare to wait, while they manually run through all the 100s of accreditations in a box to find yours in a very bottom.

And that was yesterday, I hope that with accreditation center working till 21.00 most people managed to get their badges yesterday, as the situation today at 8.30 and the length of queues may really get unpredictable.

Well, see what will happen next and what surprises await us.