By Atlas Al

Congratulations to German pop singer, Lena, who at the age of 19 has won the 2010 Eurovision singing contest in Norway with her song “Satellite.”

However, I lost some respect for the largest singing contest in the world. To call something Eurovision, shouldn’t it be European? Countries from Morocco to Jordan are eligible to participate in the contest; Israel won the contest in 1978, 1979, and 1998, and Turkey in 2003 – are they European flags?

Northern African and Middle Eastern (Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon) countries are definitely not European, and Turkey and the Caucasus region are questionable.

While it’s more than possible to hook up with foreigners in your own country (one of my friends has 10 flags and has never left his country), travel is such a huge component of flagging.

What once started as a simple guide for backpackers in SE Asia, Lonely Planet is now the leader in travel guide books. On their website, they have a Destinations page with info and tips on every country in the world. We use LP’s country grading scale as a guide to separate countries into their appropriate continental/regional sections. If you’ve already checked out our European flags section under the Flags of the World page and saw many questionable European countries, it’s for this reason.

Watch American Idol, Australian Idol, Britain’s Got Talent, or any similar show and you’ll mostly see people from that country competing. Likewise, if I watch a “Eurovision” contest, I expect to see Europeans battling it out.

I think it’s false advertising to call a singing contest Eurovision if neighboring non-European countries are able to compete. Let’s avoid any future scandal and just call the damn thing Worldvision.

Flags of the World, Norwegian flag, German flag

By Atlas Al

If you haven’t already heard about the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Flagging Headquarters brings the story to you. According to the timesonline.co.uk (London Times) November 10, 2009 article, Angela Merkel marks day the Wall fell and she took tea in the West, German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, visited East Berlin while partaking in the massive, city-wide celebrations.

To many it was the end of communism and the beginning of a new chapter in German history. Not only would history change in 1989, the flags of all those 16,000,000 East Germans would change as well. Since the end of World War II until the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany was internationally recognized as a sovereign state and its citizens were issued East German passports. Then the wall came down. East and West Germany combined to form a unified Germany, and the people of East Germany were issued new passports as citizens of Germany. As a result, it’s not possible to claim the East German flag. Why? Because East Germany doesn’t exist anymore. If you shagged an East German chick years ago, now you just have the German flag because flags should change with the tides of international politics. If your passport changes, so should your flag.

On the same note, you’d have the Canadian flag if you shagged a girl from Montreal, right? If Quebec actually secedes from Canada one day, you wouldn’t have the Canadian flag anymore; you’d have the Quebecois flag.

[It's now possible to claim expired flags. Please see Flagging HQ's post called Expired Flag Theory]

Flags of the World, European flags, German flag