1999, 2000. Bavaria, Berlin. The eternally torn man and a turn of the millennium. Our man in the mire is Josef Stumpf, a carpenter, unemployed, tired of the confines of a small community. Always in his mind are all the infamous corpses of his homeland. "The village" lives on. Yes, even the women. The community demands the integration of the individual, the complete and unconditional adaptation. He has to get out of there, he wants to leave: to Berlin! Into the consuming metropolis. "The city" as the anonymity of the masses - and with a completely different language. Josef is now even more the dialectal exile: he must arrive, fit in, get through. What needs to happen amidst the entanglements of everyday life concerning a shabby apartment, a rigid employment agency, lukewarm acquaintances, and strange people? The city is a hamster, eternally hungry, a restless creature: it grabs him, takes him in, and then spits him back out.