The childless sisters Regina, Anja and Susanne are outraged. Their wealthy mother is determined to become a grandmother and offers her fancy villa as a reward for the first of the three daughters to give her a grandchild. But Anja has completely different plans: she is going to emigrate to Brazil with Karin, the love of her life.

Fifteen-year-old Heinz Stielke is a Hitler Youth fanatic who is devastated to learn a hidden truth about his respected father who was a German officer in WWII: He was Jewish. Pushed out of his community after the discovery, young Heinz falls into a tailspin of alienation and anger. He is subsequently thrust into a series of social collisions across the war-torn German fatherland.

A man and two women are trying their luck in the red room in the countryside. The older (but therefore not wiser) Fred, freshly divorced as a kisser who still desires his ex, meets the self-confident Lucy, who feels called to explore the soul of men in her novels. She lives with her intimate friend Sibil in a Vorpommern house in the countryside. Fred decides to move from Berlin to the two women and try a ménage-à-trois. They get to know each other and themselves.

Seven-year-old Kati is glad that despite her spastic disability she is allowed to attend a normal school. Her parents made that possible. In her first year there, she is supposed to prove that she can get along at the school and she does her utmost to keep up with her classmates. Her disability, however, is greeted with constant mockery and disrespect. Even her teachers have a hard time treating her equally. When Kati fails math, she has to attend a special school. Katie is devastated but her friends help her to cope with the new situation.

Little Theresa is the sole heir to a hotel on Usedom after her mother's death. Mother's friend continues to run it. When greedy relatives demand custody, Gabriela searches for Theresa's father. Chef Thomas gets in touch...

Robert, a recently widowed engineer from Cologne, decides to change his life. He invests all he has in a new business in Southeast Germany - a network of coin operated telescopes, hoping to profit from the breathtaking vistas of the Saxon "Switzerland" area of the East. Once in that region, Robert meets Christiane, who uncanningly resembles his deceased wife. Christiane is also at a crossroads. She has a secret plan to recover something of great value lost after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Paula, the wife of a busy estate agent, wants to help her sister's orphaned daughter Maggie restructure a debt-ridden inn after the unexpected death of her sister. In doing so, she gets in the way of her own husband, who wants to sell the property behind her back to a group of investors together with his young mistress.

Although at first Ina barely takes any notice of Matti, the two teenagers gradually fall in love at their dance classes and begin their first real relationship. Their parents are upset about this development and try to prevent their children from seeing each other. But Ina and Matti continue to meet in secret and their first sexual experience together brings mixed feelings for Ina.