Krassimir Avramov, the Bulgarian hope in the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest, is currently in Athens where he will make a number of appearances on major local TV stations arranged for him by the ERT International Relations Department.

Krassimir together with two of the lady singers who will accompany him on stage in Moscow, rock singer Ani Lozanova and Petja Buyuklieva, one of the most popular Bulgarian singers, arrived yesterday morning in Athens after spending a few days in Skopje. On April 5th and 6th, Krassimir, Ani and Petja visited FYR Macedonia where they appeared on the MKRTV show Iselenicki jbox, 100% Eurosong and local radios. They had the opportunity to meet Next Time, the rock band who will be representing the country in Moscow.

The three Bulgarian stars took advantange of the favourable Athenian weather to walk the streets of Athens and do some sightseeing, a much needed break as they told us since they have spent the past few weeks in feverish preparations for the contest only a month away. In the afternoon, they visited the offices of OGAE Greece where they met with fans and watched some of the preview videos together. In the evening, Krassimir spoke to northern Greece Polis Radio.

"I can't believe I am finally in Athens", Krassimir told us, "I am a huge fan of Greek music and I grew up in a town close to the border listening to Greek radio daily. Since my Greek is not that good, I love to make up my own lyrics to the songs I love and sing them!" To prove that he went on to sing for us the special "Krassimir Avramov" version of Giorgos Mazonakis' Savvato.

Today, at 11.00 local time, Krassimir, Ani and Petja are heading to the Mega Channel studios, where they will appear on the Omorfos kosmos to proi show. Later in the day, around 15.00, they will appear on MAD TV where Krassi will perform one of his all time favourite songs live as well as Illusion, his Eurovision bid. In-between as well as on Saturday morning they will be giving more interviews for Star Channel, ERT and many more local press and media and of course esctoday.com.

At what stage are the preparations of the Illusion presentation for Moscow? Krassimir says: " The whole team has been working hard on the act. The four of us Ani Lozanova, Albena Veskova, Petja Buyuklieva and myself, together with the two amazing stilt dancers from the United States work daily so we perfect every single detail of the complex choreography and the vocals." "We have made slight modifications to the song, for example we added some strong beats to it, which we hope the audience will like", he concludes.