The Grand Budapest Hotel doesn’t actually take place in Budapest; rather, it’s set in Zubrowka, a fictional European country dreamed up by Wes Anderson. If you’d like to know more about the setting, as well as the bygone era between the wars when the film takes place, you’re in luck: Anderson’s team has put together a new vignette, exclusive to Vulture, that conscripts The Grand Budapest Hotel’s Tom Wilkinson for a lecture on Zubrowka and progress that culminates with a very necessary lyric sheet for Zubrowka’s national anthem (“The spirit of Zubrowka will not be abated/Your glory and grandeur will forever be stated!”). It’s all in support of The Society of the Crossed Keys, a brand-new book of Anderson-selected writings from the Austrian author Stefan Zweig, whose life and work inspired The Grand Budapest Hotel. Study up: This will all be on the next test.
