🚗 “Eurotour” in reality: how to repeat the route from the film
“Euro Tour ” is a film about the crazy journey of yesterday’s schoolchildren, which is easily parsed into quotes. If you also read “miscusi, miscusi” and imagine a train, a mustachioed Italian and a long tunnel, then you have watched an American comedy.
” Europe is tiny, we can walk from London to Berlin.” It’s clearly not worth taking tourist information from there and trusting travel stereotypes, but repeating the route is difficult, but possible.
In the film it looks like this: Oberlin, Ohio, USA – London – Paris – Cagnes-sur-mer – Amsterdam – Bratislava – Berlin – Rome – Vatican. Actually a ready-made tour of Europe.
I'm guessing you won't be flying from the States, so we'll limit ourselves to Europe. The first difficulty is visas. For such a trip, if you are not a citizen of one of the EU countries, for example , you need British and Schengen visas.
Otherwise, everything is simple: just buy tickets and book hotels, but how the characters in the film got from city to city and where they spent the night – read on.
London. Football fans and pub
The friends flew to London by plane from the USA as couriers; there were no tickets to Berlin (history is silent about where their package went). Already in the city, Scott and Cooper, instead of sightseeing (for example, the Tower of London, which sounded like one of the options for spending time), went straight to the Fiesty Goat pub – in reality this does not exist. But after the release of the film in 2004, establishments with that name were opened in the USA and Canada.
In a pub, friends ran into angry Manchester United fans. Interestingly, the role of one of the football fans was played by professional footballer, FA Cup winner Vinnie Jones. He played 9 international matches for Wales. And I was never a Manchester United fan.
Paris. Queues and battle of “robots”
After a wild night with a lot of beer, the friends end up in Paris on bus e, along with the football fans who picked them up.
“Paris is almost a suburb of Berlin.” In fact, Berlin-Paris is a really popular tourist route, but the distance between the cities is more than 1000 km.
In the French capital, the main characters meet two more friends and are all rushing to the Louvre together, but they don’t have the patience to stand in huge lines. And this is the very case when the stereotype turns out to be true. Of course, everything is not as bad as in the film, but you will have to stand up for tickets. But remember that there is more than one entrance to the museum. I went to the box office through the Carousel du Louvre shopping gallery and this significantly saved me time buying a ticket. Keep this in mind even if you buy e-tickets in advance. “While you’re here, I’ll take the queue at the Eiffel Tower” is also a true joke.
One of the attractions in the queue was a battle between Scott and a street performer who looked and moved like a robot. In Paris, as in many other large European cities, there are quite a lot of “mummers,” magicians, and musicians with whom you can take photos for a donation and watch their performances.
After having dinner at a French restaurant, the guys are thinking about their further route, which should bring them to the desired Berlin.
Provence and nudist beach
Then they travel by train to Amsterdam, but make a connection in the small town of Cagnes-sur-Mer, in the southeast of the country in Provence. Cagnes-sur-Mer is one of the most popular resort towns on the French Riviera. Friends decide to visit the local nudist beach. In reality, there is no nudist beach there, and the closest one is in the Netherlands in Zandvoort.
Amsterdam. Weed brownies, robbery and “flugegeheimen”
In the film, it was the Netherlands that collected the most vivid cliches about the country. While Cooper is having fun in the fictional Wondersex bar on the Red Light District and cannot pronounce the famous made-up safe word “flugegeheimen,” his friend is robbed, also in a very piquant situation. Dominatrix and “Xena: Warrior Princess,” by the way, were played by the same actress—Lucy Lawless.
At this time, the rest of the heroes expand their gastronomic horizons with weed cakes, which in fact turn out to be ordinary brownies. But the truth is that in Amsterdam you can actually try a lot of “forbidden pleasures”, and do it safely.
Bratislava. The specter of communism and the excellent exchange rate
Let me remind you that in the story, my friends were robbed and they had almost no money left. Therefore, in order to finally get to Berlin, they decide to hitchhike. Alas, Scott's German level is not enough, and a tipsy truck driver takes the heroes straight to the capital of Slovakia – Bratislava.
I’ll tell you where the whole film was shot, but cinematic Bratislava is a separate form of art and stereotypes about Eastern Europe, elevated to the absolute.
In the role of Bratislava, the film shows the Czech city of Milovice, which was the headquarters of the Soviet Central Group of Forces of the USSR from 1968 to 1991. After the withdrawal of Soviet units, the training ground and military camp were closed. But, according to the scriptwriters of Eurotour, it was the neglected appearance of the abandoned buildings that ideally reflected the stereotypical American idea of a typical post-communist city in Eastern Europe. One line from the recognizable song “Get up, huge country” playing in the background is worth it. Today Milovice has been well renovated, although there are still a lot of abandoned buildings.
Therefore, the phrase “Lord, help us, we are in Eastern Europe” also became popular. The first thing the company of heroes saw was gray panels damaged by graffiti, broken windows, construction, old cars. And when asked how soon the heroes could get to Berlin, they were told: “Soon, they have already begun to build the road.” This is a comedy, so I won’t even draw parallels here. Bratislava is a beautiful European city, from where, by the way, you can easily get cheap tickets to Berlin by bus or train.
The film is from 2004, and the euro was introduced into circulation in Slovakia in 2009. Before this, stereotypes about local Eastern European currencies could hardly be called true. But opening your own restaurant for 10 cents, as you understand, was never possible anywhere.
After hanging out in a nightclub, the heroes go to Berlin without incident, they are picked up by a local resident in a car.
- The path of the Illuminati in Rome: through the pages of “Angels and Demons” by Dan Brown
- How to see Paris in two days and not die?
- Reboot point: five-day London itinerary
Berlin. Changing route
Friends went to Berlin so that the main character could meet a girl, but according to the law of the genre, she left at the last moment. And the travelers rushed after her to Rome. I remind you again that my friends do not have money or passports: they were stolen. But Jamie sells his camera and the company buys plane tickets with the proceeds. In reality, they would not be allowed into a third country without passports. And keep in mind that they won’t let you in without a visa.
Rome and the Vatican. Finish
I won’t retell this part with a happy ending (in the original script, not everything is so rosy), I will only say that it is also fantastic. The heroes wouldn’t have gotten into the Pope’s office so easily and caused a commotion there.
More interesting facts
I am revealing the main secret of the film “Eurotrip”. All 10 weeks of filming took place in Prague, with the exception of “Bratislava”. Milovice is located 57 km from the Czech capital.
The film had several pilot titles, the first of which was “Horrible Americans,” but due to the Iraq War, the title was considered too provocative.
A very dark joke from Amsterdam was also cut from the script – an episode with one of the most famous victims of Nazism. Where, instead of a party for adults, one of the characters mistakenly ends up in the Anne Frank House Museum. The scene seemed too harsh even for the authors of a cheeky youth comedy, it was rewritten and replaced with a scene with “flugegeheimen”.
According to the plot of the original film, the characters' overnight stays are almost not shown; they sleep either in transport or in clubs. But if you carefully watch the credits after the film, you can hear the owner of the hostel telling the characters “about a possible fire upstairs due to fireworks.” She refers to a real fireworks explosion in the Dutch city of Enschede on May 13, 2000, which destroyed an entire area.
And if you suddenly wonder: what to read on such a trip? Then the characters read one book throughout the entire film: “Sinners” by Jackie Collins. Only for this did the film crew have enough money to buy the copyright.
It is curious that the film failed at the American box office, but Europeans liked it. Even the final title of the film, originally “EuroTrip,” did not save the situation. They did this in order to interest fans of another film, “RoadTrip” (2000), which made a huge box office in American cinemas.
Even without the crazy fictional adventures of the heroes, it is very difficult to repeat the route in reality. And it’s not even about how the logistics are arranged. Such an intense change of “personnel”, cities and countries does not lead to pleasure, but rather to fatigue. I speak as an avid fan of European tours. You should always allow 1-2 days of rest between intense movements. If there is a lot of free time and the route can last for weeks, then a bon voyage.