Architect Alexander Beck has just won an architecture prize. He wants to modernize GDR building blocks in Thuringia. Alex travels to the heart of rural Eastern Germany where he grew up and where people remember him as Alex from the Free German Youth, a pro-GDR youth organization.
The thirty year old bee is a daredevil, everything seems to work for him. But suddenly a tragic event tears him out of his carelessness. In the explosion of a carbide furnace in operation, a colleague is killed.
Two old pals lose their work as boatmen on the Elbe river. While down-to-earth Gero tries to get back on his feet, reckless Kowsky keeps gambling with friendship and life time and time again. For all that, they set out together from Dresden for Hamburg, hoping to find new work, a new love, a new life.
