A group of kids grow up on the short, wrong (east) side of the Sonnenallee in Berlin, right next to one of the few border crossings between East and West reserved for German citizens. The antics of these kids, their families, of the "West German" friends and relatives who come to visit, and of the East German border guards, all serve to illustrate the absurdity of everyday life on the Sonnenallee, and therefore throughout the former East Germany.

In October 1989, the part of the West Berlin borough of Kreuzberg called SO 36, had been largely shut off by the Wall from the rest of the city for 28 years. A lethargic sub-culture of students, artists, bohemians and barflys had flourished among crumbling buildings. Part of that microcosm is barkeeper Frank, semi-formally called 'Herr Lehmann' by friends and patrons. He hangs out drinking, sports utter disregard for anything beyond SO 36 and lazily pursues an affair with cook Katrin. His lifestyle is gradually disturbed, when his parents show up for a visit, things go awry with Katrin and his best friend Karl starts to act strange. Meanwhile, political turmoil mounts on the other side of the Wall.

Jan is an absolute heartthrob and a diehard Hertha fan. Katrin is attractive, just as successful and an incorrigible romantic. Chance makes the two the ideal couple. At least almost. Everything would be perfect if the two flagship models of their species did not lapse into primeval behavioral patterns. And so Jan sinks a little too deep in the cleavage of his secretary Melanie, and Katrin can not resist the adventurer Jonathan's lead role.

Somewhere in the GDR, in 1988: young soldier Henrik Heidler starts his service in the National People's Army, a whole new world. Together with the weighty troublemaker Krüger, Heidler and his fellow soldiers try to somehow do their time between old hands and bureaucrats. It's not always fun, because the superiors are annoying with socialist propaganda from the day before yesterday, the material and equipment is scarce and not exactly new, while morale is at rock bottom. His relationship with his girlfriend isn't holding up either. But then Heidler meets Marie, the daughter of commander Kalt of all people, and falls in love. And then, at some point, the Wall comes down and everything changes ... for everyone in the NVA!

Robert works as a gamedev in Hamburg and, together with his team, which includes his best friend and flatmate Ole and his girlfriend Lorna, is on the verge of completing an innovative first-person shooter. Before the Chinese businessmen arrive, Robert goes to the nearby sausage stand with Ole and messes up his gray suit with ketchup. On the spur of the moment, he goes to a nearby dry cleaner and asks the ladies working there for quick help. Normally he would have to wait a day, but Monika promises to clean the suit within two hours. Robert's reaction seems a little strange, but no one can yet suspect that he has just fallen head over heels in love with the attractive woman in her mid-forties.

A lifeguard at Lake Müggel has his hand bitten off and the marks indicate a shark attack. The lake is closed to the public by extending a local festival indefinitely while the city council thinks of what can be done to remove the shark. The public becomes restless having their lake closed for so long and come up with a plan to drive the shark from the lake with large quantities of beer.

The GDR casts its shadow right up to the present day: Stefan Kortman, a respected doctor in Hanover, carries a dark secret with him. Nobody in his home country knows that he was a Wall sniper and shot the husband of a young, pregnant woman trying to escape at the German-German border. Despite all his successes in his professional and private life, Stefan still can't find peace 20 years later. He wants to explain himself to the fugitive from back then.

Tore, a young lost soul involved with an underground Christian punk movement, falls in with a dysfunctional family who test his seemingly unwavering faith.

When German police viciously quell a protest against the shah of Iran, popular journalist Ulrike Meinhof rebels against her dishonest marriage, walks away from her children and joins radical anarchist Andreas Baader. Together with Baader's girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin, they form the violent Red Faction Army, and together perpetrate a slew of terrorist attacks as a way of disrupting the fabric of what they see as an increasingly fascist state.

Sophie Brand is overwhelmed: as a single mother with two jobs no wonder. A mountain of unpaid traffic tickets takes her to the judge, who buzzes her 300 social hours in a home for the disabled. In addition, he puts her on his own brother: Georg, a dreaded patient in the home, who sits in a wheelchair since an accident and only bitterness for his environment left. But Sophie can not rausekeln. So it happens that something special develops out of initial antipathy: trust, friendship, love. The emotional tragicomedy knows how to implement a supposed taboo subject sensitively.