Yeah. A few amusing touches, though, what with the Salem mention. And Harry is evidently not bad at recognizing flags, knowing a Bulgarian flag when he sees one...

They run into a few Beauxbatons (nice name, incidentally, although iirc the French translate "wand" as "baguette", which is even funnier) students in chapter nine. I have a feeling Durmstrang will get a throwaway mention too, but I may be wrong on that.

That conversation was brilliant, and a major exception in Rowling's failure to do international stuff well. Nice touch. Though it does make one wonder how Pakistani and other immigrants function in wizarding Britain... we have the Indian Patil twins, but never in detail, unfortunately. If there's a ban on them importing their traditional flying carpets, that's not a good sign about how much they can maintain their culture and traditions.

Yeah. And seeing the Death Eaters described as a "large group of people" was a bit odd as well, considering how few there end up being at the end of the book. Then again, if we're to judge by the Malfoys, the Death Eaters are a sexist reactionary lot, and while wives may participate in the fun Muggle-bullying, they evidently don't get the Death Mark or participate in the gatherings.

In the same vein, the spell Morsmordre for the Dark Sign is clearly inspired by the same thing, but equally odd. Biting in Death? What? Or is that spell different in English (some are changed, most aren't)?

Good point. Also relevant in this vein is Diggory's mentioning of a law banning all non-humans from having or using wands - a house elf doesn't need it, having magic of its own, but centaurs, kobolds and others might resent that quite a bit. The house elves thing is the beginning (except perhaps for the centaur conversation in the very first book) of the theme of the oppression of the non-human and semi-human races that will become fairly big later on.