Isa and her older brother Kars' parents change course and start a campsite in France. Isa and Kars feel like they are moving to Timbuktu and losing everything. Fortunately, they don't complain for long, because they soon make new friends. But while new friendships blossom, Camping Timbuktu runs into trouble. Not far from them, another campsite has opened, and its unsympathetic owner tries to damage Camping Timbuktu in every way possible. It even looks like the campsite will have to close... Will Isa and Kars manage to keep Timbuktu open?
This is a family story that covers thirty years in the life of the Freytag family (narrated by the grandson, Robert). When his grandfather returns from Russia in 1949, he becomes part of the German "economic miracle" by producing garden gnomes. Klaus, Robert's father, wants to become a writer. He marries Gisela who almost immediately gets pregnant with Robert - but the marriage doesn't work. Both parents abandon the child, and Robert goes on living with both pairs of grand parents. While his father belongs to the 1968 generation that rebels against their fathers he falls in love with the neighbor's's daughter Laura.
Danni Lowinski is a hairdresser in need of money who decides to become a lawyer.
