Slumming (2006)

The street poet Kallmann wanders drunkenly and noisily through wintry Vienna, trying to sell his poems to passersby. Every now and then, he visits Herta, a prostitute and his partner, who sits at the bar in their usual local pub. The two yuppies Sebastian and Alex, meanwhile, spend their evenings in run-down bars and cafés, making fun of the people there. They call this “slumming.” One day, on their way home, they come across Kallmann, dead drunk and motionless on a bench outside Vienna’s Westbahnhof station. On a whim, they decide to play a prank on him and drive him across the border to the Czech Republic in the trunk of their car. There, they lay him on a bench in front of the station in the town of Znaim. When Kallmann wakes up the next morning, he is completely bewildered. He does not recognize his surroundings, and the people are speaking a foreign language. Once all the clues point to his being abroad, he tries to get back to Vienna. With money he has begged for more by chance than by design, he gets on the next bus—but it is heading not to Vienna, but deep into the Czech countryside. Kallmann first tries hitchhiking, but when he sees a police checkpoint, he heads instead across a snow-covered field. After spending a night in a hut beside a frozen lake, he spends the following night in a farm’s barn. The next day, the farmers discover him, give him something to eat, and he manages to phone Herta. In the meantime, Pia, one of Sebastian’s many online acquaintances, has learned about the “joke,” finds Herta, and sets off with her to look for Kallmann. By then, however, a clever idea has already helped him find his own way home. In the end, Sebastian finds his “megaslum” in Jakarta, after suddenly setting off on a long-distance trip out of fear of being held accountable.