The plot revolves around the confusion and misunderstandings that arise when a package labeled "Postlagernd 212" arrives in a small Swiss village. The village community is curious and speculates about the contents of the package, leading to a series of humorous and chaotic events.

17-year-old Edith is celebrating at her friend's house in Zurich when she is dragged to a nightclub by the unscrupulous seducer Jean, who gets her drunk and abuses her. When she becomes pregnant, she asks her father, who is a gynecologist, to perform an abortion. He initially refuses, but eventually agrees to perform the procedure—with fatal consequences.

Her father having served a prison sentence, there is unending gossiping about Therese's family. Unable to put up with it any longer, the young woman leaves her native village for the canton of Bern where she manages to be hired by Anton Muller, a wealthy, authoritarian farmer. Under the young woman's spell, Anton wants to make his servant his mistress but Thérèse refuses energetically.. Later on, she nevertheless accepts to marry Anton. On the wedding day, she meets Gottfried, her bridegroom's son, and they instantly fall passionately in love with each other.

A wealthy man buys a hotel that is not very profitable. To check that everything is in order, he gets himself hired as a hotel porter without revealing his identity.

After the death of his parents, Beat Matter grows up with the Escher family. Their son Dominik is his best friend. As a young man, Beat enlists for two years of service with the Papal Swiss Guard in Rome. Shortly before starting his service, he meets Dominik's fiancée Jacqueline at an Alpine festival. He falls in love, even though he knows that Jacqueline is already promised to someone else.

A policeman is not convinced that the prime suspect in a murder case is realty guilty and so decides to reinvestigate the case, despite the lack of co-operation from locals.

While on a longer business trip, a wannabe poet urges his beautiful but more simple wife to answer his overly swollen love letters. With no idea how to respond she forwards the letters to a new young school teacher to use his answers instead...