The main characters of the film, inspired by director Soukup's own experiences at the Škodovka factory in Pilsen, are two inseparable friends who, after graduating from the industrial school, join a large engineering plant. Here they spend their first year of post-graduate life, where their vague ideas and ideals clash with their completely different life experience. In addition to their conflicting work experiences, Ondřej and Cyril have to deal with their own personal problems. They have big plans for the future, but their dreams are unexpectedly interrupted by a tragic event.

A British citizen by the name of George Reiner (Jirí Sovák) arrives at Prague airport. He was once a Czech safe-breaker, and has now returned home after thirty years to steal twenty-dollar gold coins still kept in the safe at a private villa in Pilsen whose owner fled to the West.

A budding teacher comes from Prague to the South Bohemian district town where her fiancé Jakub, a young promising engineer at the local paper mill, lives. Petra is getting to know her new colleagues at school and the children in her new class, and is practicing hard with the Komenium music group, whose members she has known since her studies. She also gets to know Jakub's colleagues and the director of the paper mill, to whose position Jakub would like to be appointed after his retirement. It is this desire for a high position that leads Jakub to behave and act in a way that Petra cannot approve of.