Soccer and Europe. What else can you ask for in life? Soccer is displayed as the universal language in the world. Although it's very difficult to ever see a Champions League final between Galatasaray and Deportivo la Coruña, but it's a movie! Fast paced, directly to the point, funny, slightly dramatic,; short stories into one movie. A very well done release.Recently I went to some European countries and I found myself in some of the situations displayed in the movie. The way the events are displayed is with humor that every person in the world could understand.The clichés displayed are also comical when they need to be funny and realistic when the plot asks for it.For example, the Hungarian guy in Santiago de Compostela has to deal with the Gallegos, whose are believed to be very dumb (no offense). The situation is comical and tragic at the same time as in a minor sub-plot the Hungarian traveler confesses that he tried to commit suicide.The other stories were really interesting and hook you into the plot. I would recommend this movie to anyone who has been to Europe and also for those who want to go to the Old World, a spectacular and beautiful place.I'm from México and I know this is not the correct media but, I want to thank many European countries for being very gentle with me during my trip.

I've just watched the DVD of this movie. I feel it interesting, and I consider the difference of the different country's culture and languages is similar to China. But unlike European divided countries, China is huge country with 23 different provinces. Each province is equals the size of an European country. Each Chinese province has its unique culture, localisms, dialects,etc. Especially in the southern provinces, even in one province, people from different cities or counties can't understand each other if they just speak their own dialect. Like this movie, people in Europe usually could speak English. In China, people usually could speak "mandarin" which is the Chinese official language. But at Guangdong or Hongkong, people prefer Cantonese to mandarin. So usually when people from northern arrive in Hongkong at first time, he or she will find that the native may understand what he says, but he he could understand nothing of what the native says. That's just about the language the Han People, in fact, there are 56 different nationalities in China. Welcome to China!

A very nicely done movie; this could be a good first feature preceding "Night on Earth". It's a bit more straight-forward; save the Jarmusch for dessert.The unifying plot element is a soccer match in Moscow between teams from Spain and Turkey. The secondary element is luggage insurance: in each of the four vignettes the recovery of money for lost baggage is either desired or assumed. (No deeper meaning.) The Englishwoman in Moscow gets ripped off. The German in Istanbul is trying to rip off. The Hungarian pilgrim in Spain only wants his photos of the holy places returned. The French couple are trying to make their so far unsuccessful trip to Berlin more profitable than it has been.In each there is good acting and a great presentation on the language barrier. It's comforting to know it's not only Americans who can't speak the language. The lack of understanding is secondary to the half-understandings and slight misunderstandings, often made even more comedic by the (very slight) national profiling in play. None of the characters seem too much like their own national stereotype, yet most assume the other nationalities have a particular character.And although I listed this as containing spoilers, I won't tell you who wins the soccer shootout (you'll need to stay through the credits for that!).

I watched the movie in Istanbul Film Festival with the presence of the director Hannes Stöhr - I was sitting just three rows up from where Mr. Stöhr sat. Anyway, I liked the movie's sense of internationality, its funny but balanced approach towards national differences, its respect to the nationalistic views and its notion of Europe not being a continent just constituted by EU-countries. The humor of the movie is built upon international differences and similarities. It bears some bias on nations but it doesn't emphasize them, it just plays with them to create humor. At the end, I liked the movie and I liked Mr. Stöhr after listening to his conference about his movie. Not an important movie after all, but helps enjoying being European with a cute humor.