At 41, Erwin Kobarek still lives with his mother, with whom he runs a petrol station in the countryside. A relationship has not yet materialized for Erwin. When his mother senses that her son needs a wife, she sends Erwin to a marriage agency in Romania. And indeed, Erwin returns with a young Romanian woman, Irina Bobescu. She sets something irreversible in motion in him: the detachment from his mother and the moulting from boy to belated man.

When Andreas arrives in the remote valley in the Austrian Alps, he is only about four years old - nobody knows for sure. He grows up to become a skilled farmhand and, as a young man, joins a work crew that builds one of the first mountain railroads, bringing light and noise to the valley along with electricity. He also finds the love of his life in Marie, but their happiness is short-lived. Only many years later, when Andreas embarks on his final journey, she is with him once again. And in amazement Andreas looks back at all the years that lie behind him.

Vienna, 1937, on the eve of the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany. The young and inexperienced Franz Huchel begins to learn about both the joys and hardships of life by working as an apprentice to the mutilated war veteran Otto Trsnjek in a small tobacco shop, where he meets the famous psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, a regular customer, who will become a valuable friend in times of chaos and uncertainty.