Camping, Camping (1977)

Bus driver Detlef Engel travels with his wife Eveline and their daughter Nina to the Baltic Sea for a camping holiday, where they are meeting up with the Tabberts, a family they are friends with. But soon after they arrive, Detlef receives a telegram supposedly from the management at his workplace, saying he must return to work urgently. In reality, however, the telegram is a trick devised by Detlef, who finally wants some time without his family after 16 years of marriage. In East Berlin, he meets up with his colleague Alfred Pommeranz, who has left his family at the holiday resort in the same way. The two of them now try, in vain, to enjoy their brief bachelorhood. But amusements such as fairground rides and boat trips bore them, and their attempts to meet women end in dismal failure as well. Meanwhile, Nina is flirted with by Harry, the Tabberts’ older son, but behaves snippily and keeps him at a distance. Meanwhile, after a long time, Eveline gets dressed up and goes dancing with the Tabberts. There, the young and charming Thomas Flemming flirts with her; he works as a lifeguard on the beach. He offers her a change from her strict, somewhat stuffy and constantly grumbling husband, and the two spend a lot of time together over the following days. One evening, Thomas even takes her home with him, and she spends the night there, although until then she had always rebuffed his attempts to seduce her. The next morning, she returns to the campsite and tells Nina that she spent the night at a hotel with a friend she had happened to run into. When Detlef returns to the Baltic Sea after a week, having seen the error of his ways, he finds Eveline much more self-confident.