Thene, 25, a student from Oxford with a second home in Heidelberg, is living her dream: she drives with her boyfriend in an old BMW to her favorite clearing in the Odenwald, sets up a folding table, reads, writes, and occasionally enjoys a piece of cherry cake. Unfortunately, Thene's Odenwald idyll is repeatedly interrupted by what she can only tolerate in small doses: her patchwork family, a mix of East and West Germans scattered in all directions. At the forefront is her mother Astrid - a world-saver, punk, highly manipulative, and increasingly more interested in herself than in her children.