Lars Barthel met Chetna Vora, the daughter of an Indian Communist parliamentarian while they were studying directing in socialist East Germany. They collaborated on each other’s documentary projects and married and had a child.

When Hurtig signs on as a tourist guide on a Black Sea cruise, he has his hands full taking care of the guests' requests and often gets into trouble with his boss. But his job is not the only thing that's complicated.

Gustl Wagner’s beloved wife Gerda, a housewife who was fond of singing, has become a star overnight, idolized and surrounded by admirers. Blinded by jealousy, Gustl sinks first to brooding, then sleeplessness, and finally to alcohol.

In 1943 on the eastern front, the Berlin worker Kurt Hartung, now a private, survives a bombing even though his superior Steckbeck almost causes his death by ordering him to disarm an unexploded bomb. Shortly thereafter, he is captured by a Russian patrol while on a scouting mission.

Wolfgang from Berlin is on vacation in Rügen and enjoys playing with the local children in a blown-up beachside bunker. When the children discover an old shipwreck off the coast, they take a boat out one night to explore.

The legendary amber room, which King Frederick William I of Prussia gave as a gift to Peter the Great of Russian in 1716, was confiscated, dismantled and transported out of Königsberg (Kaliningrad) by the German military and has been missing since 1944.