Three activists cobble together a kidnapping plot after they encounter a businessman in his home.

Otto and Leo are two men from Germany who have launched a successful business in which they import koi, the beautiful Japanese fish, for collectors in their native land. While on a business trip to Japan, Otto and Leo meet Ida, a German tourist who is studying fashion design. Ida begins traveling with the two men, and surprisingly develops an infatuation with the rumpled Otto instead of the handsome Leo. When Ida discovers she's pregnant with Otto's child, the two marry, and upon their return to Germany, Ida attempts to join in the business by creating a line of scarves decorated with koi patterns. However, the honeymoon proves short-lived, and Ida's presence creates a rift between Otto and Leo, as the latter sets up his own concern, raising koi with his new bride, Yoko.

Rolf Köster has been working as a cashier in a small bank branch for years. Every day passes like the day before. He has a thirteen-year-old daughter who would rather write in a diary than speak and a six-year-old son who has to wear a bicycle helmet because he is constantly banging his head against walls. His wife organizes the whole family life, and Rolf stays in the background. But he has doubts as to whether he, who has "everything", is really happy. Then Rolf is unexpectedly given a week's vacation. He decides not to tell his family and to leave the house as usual. Rolf Köster begins to lead a double life.

The former waiter Ernst Held believes himself to be called higher and seeks self-realization as a poet. When he recites poems to his wife's beautician in an ambiguous situation, his wife puts him out the door. Completely destitute, the thwarted poet must therefore return to the lowlands of life and become the head in the Munich pub "Goldener Löffel".

At the end of World War II, a German soldier is looking for his daughter while an SS troop is looking for a Jewish treasure.

Next to the home of Heinz and Hilde Becker is the villa of the company boss Dr. Bernhard Schenkberg and his wife, who he called "Püppchen". While Schenkberg always politely strives for a good neighborly relationship, his elegant, arrogant wife looks down contemptuously on the grumpy, constantly do-it-yourself Heinz and the conservative, naive housewife Hilde.

Two middle aged German brothers - one New Age and recently divorced, the other uptight and sceptical - travel to a Zen monastery in Japan in search of enlightenment, or perhaps just in search of themselves.

Tommie and Mario are on the prowl again. But this time not through the alcohol haze of Cologne Kalk or the Ballermann Club on Mallorca but through the German underworld. For a while, at least, because the police want to get rid of their two most stupid employees by far as soon as possible. When the billy goat "Hennes", the mascot of the 1st FC Cologne, is kidnapped, they see their chance for rehabilitation and rush to save their favorite club. Their investigation leads them across Germany, then they get it: "Hennes" must be in Munich - with the arch-rival of FC Bayern, who is targeting the morale of the troops of Cologne soccer with his outrageous kidnapping...

Young Lena Kehl urgently wants to speak to the Berlin star reporter Meike Marndorfer, but is then driven to her death. Meike senses a story about old Stasi machinations and investigates in Lena's home town of Neubrandenburg. Together with Lena's boyfriend Robert, she discovers something that shakes up her life.