It all starts with a bang. The car breaks through the crash barrier and falls off the bridge. The lights go out. After that, he is not able to see anymore. His optic nerve is severed, from now on the young stage-director Jakob is blind. His life will change and nothing will ever be the same. Jakob cannot handle the idea of never being able to see again and screams at the only woman who is able and willing to help him, Lily. A rehabilitation teacher, she helps the blind deal with the darkness. Lily has been living with it since birth, she too is blind.

Horse lover Paul Scheibner has dedicated himself to an unprofitable art: The young man wants to become a rider at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. When his uncomprehending girlfriend Regina leaves him for a nouveau riche hotelier's son, he finds solace with the animal-loving stud secretary Julia. But then his beloved stallion “Maestoso” suddenly falls ill and is to be sold.

Vienna, 1947. Bockerer and his wife Binerl have survived the war, though his butcher's shop was destroyed by bombs. Karl Bockerer opens up a new establishment in the center of the city. Post-war Vienna is divided into four zones in which the Allies run things and ensure that law and order prevails. This is the story of two lovers: Gustl, just returned form a POW camp, and the Russian interpreter Elena. Bockerer becomes the patron of their love. Elena's father was executed by Stalin, and the only way she can escape a similar fate is to marry an Austrian. Bockerer "buys" a husband for Elena and, full of tricks as ever, he succeeds in pulling the wool over the Russian occupier's eyes.

It all starts when she runs away from the altar in a church in Hamburg. Easygoing Henny Schönberg has qualms about marrying in the very last second and runs off to leave her stunned would-be husband Martin von Platt. Still dressed in her wedding gown, she takes the next best flight, not caring about its destination.

After Henny's father loses his job at her ex-fiancee's shipyard because of Henny's affair with Sigi, he begins to panic about how to make a living and tries to find new quarters. His sister, Henny's aunt Marlene, suffers as a result of his chaotic efforts. The path to his new life requires that Henny get married, as the aunt is a strict puritan. But whoever knows Henny can be sure that things will take a few unexpected turns...

The twelve year old Ivo has been living in Vienna with his family for three years. His father and brothers work at construction sites. Their Austrian neighbors despise the Yugoslav guest workers. Because the mother has to look after the sick grandmother at home in Croatia, Ivo runs the male household in Vienna alone. Solitude and insults from the locals make the child unhappy. And so Ivo decides on a rainy winter's day to return to his home village on his own.

In the year 1968, the “Bockerer” has decided, after many attempts, to marry his long-time widowed housekeeper, Anna. Gustl, whom he as taken in like a son after the war, will open a butchery in the Czech small town Kostelec and invites the Bockerers to spend their wedding journey with him and his Elena. The “Prague Spring”, of which everywhere is talked so much about, promises a nice honeymoon, and their friend Hatzinger is taken along on the journey as well. Soon after their arrival, the Bockerer has to realize that “Communism with a human face” is still an idle wish.

Edited from the first two episodes of the Austrian TV-show "Almenrausch und Pulverschnee".