In the student comedy L'Auberge Espagnole – Barcelona für ein Jahr [The Spanish Inn – A Year in Barcelona], French director Cédric Klapisch paid cinematic homage to the European Commission's Erasmus exchange program. In the period between its launch in 1987 and the 2007/08 academic year, the program, which is named after Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1465-1536), gave more than 1.8 million students the opportunity to study abroad. Nearly 290,000 program participants came from Germany. In 2007/08, the countries participating in the exchange program – which has been very successful in building Europe “from the bottom up" – included not only the 27 states of the European Union, but also Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Turkey. The film portrays the chaotic co-existence of students from Belgium, Denmark, Germany, England, Italy, and Spain in a shared apartment in Barcelona. The photo shows Alessandro from Italy (Federico D'Anna, left), Lars from Denmark (Christian Pagh, 2nd from left), Xavier from France (Roman Guris, 2nd from right), and Isabelle from Belgium (Cécile de France, right) in their shared apartment.