Und nächstes Jahr am Balaton (1980)

Ines Moldenschütt and her boyfriend Jonas, known as Jonny, live in Berlin and want to spend their summer vacation together. Jonny suggests spending the journey “somewhere different every day” and camping in a tent at their destination on the Baltic Sea. At an exhibition of camping equipment, they sneak a trial lie-down in a tent, but are caught. On the spot, they buy the tent and take it with them. Ines’s parents have no fundamental objection to Jonny, but agree to a vacation together only on the condition that they choose the destination and come along themselves: the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. When Ines tells Jonny about this the next day, she is not at all opposed to the idea, and the two part in an argument, though they make up again shortly afterward. Once everyone is on the train heading south, Irene Moldenschütt surprises the young couple in the dining car with engagement rings, so they can get officially engaged before arriving, “for the sake of appearances.” But this is finally too much for Jonny, and at a stop in the middle of nowhere he simply gets off the train, intending to hitchhike on alone. As a result, Ines has a serious quarrel with her parents, and shortly afterward Irene and Heinz quarrel too. Heinz then has a bottle of vodka brought to him. Irene misses the train’s departure while trying to buy a newspaper at a kiosk in a station along the way, and now tries hitchhiking as well. She is picked up by the somewhat erratic Otto Schmiedel, who is also traveling to Bulgaria and gives her a ride in his Trabant. In Hungary, the two stumble upon a wedding party, where Irene flirts with an attractive local guest and eventually begins dancing with him in a close embrace. It is left unclear whether she also spends the night with him. Otto, who had similar hopes, drowns his irritation in strong drink. Eventually, he falls asleep at the now-empty outdoor banquet table. Meanwhile, Heinz Moldenschütt is taken off the train at the Czechoslovak border because his many suitcases in the now-empty compartment make him seem suspicious to the border police. Dazed from drinking the bottle of vodka, he follows the border guards’ instructions without much resistance and without thinking about the rest of his family. Ines watches this from the train, but it has already started moving again, so she has to continue alone. Jonny has meanwhile been picked up by the truck driver Kalle, whose route goes to Prague. Kalle draws on his own experience to tell Jonny that women are nothing but trouble anyway. Shortly afterward, they notice a young girl apparently getting out of a car after a furious argument. When Kalle stops and offers her help, she attacks him, so he climbs back into his truck and drives on. But just before that, Jonny has gotten out, and he wins the girl’s trust by playing his harmonica. She is Shireen, a Dutch woman who plans to hitchhike through the Balkans and Greece as far as India. The two then continue on together. They make it to Prague and the next day are picked up by a truck. Shireen climbs into the cab, while Jonny climbs onto the flatbed, where he is completely surprised to run into Kuß and Rainer, two coworkers from his workplace. The truck is carrying a number of beer kegs, so they decide to celebrate their unexpected reunion right there. But scarcely have they tapped one of the kegs when the driver notices. He brakes, and the three young men correctly suspect that they are about to be in trouble. They jump off the truck and flee from the road. Late that evening, in a small Czech town, they unexpectedly get a delicious dinner (“it’s not like back home”), and even draft beer, despite being in a wine bar. An older man speaks to them and invites them to stay the night at his home. He is fond of old wall clocks and compares them to people: if one stops despite being wound again and again, that person’s life is over. He shows his young guests several clocks that have been stopped for years, alongside photographs of his two deceased wives. When Rainer points to a clock with a young woman’s photograph and asks what it means, their host replies that it belongs to his daughter, who emigrated to Australia. She must be dead, he says, because the clock stopped a few days ago despite his winding it regularly. In the middle of the night, Jonny gets up, takes down the clock, repairs it, and hangs it back on the wall, ticking. The next day, the three meet Fränze, Grille, and Evelyn, a trio of girls their age, by the roadside. To make faster progress, Jonny, Kuß, and Rainer draw lots to decide who will travel with whom from then on. The girls regard this rather suspiciously, but eventually agree. All three couples arrange to meet the next morning on the Danube steps in front of the parliament building in Budapest. Jonny is paired with Fränze, who has an address where she is supposed to be able to stay overnight. No one there knows the person in question, but a young man working on his car notices the two and offers them a place to sleep. Jonny tries to get closer to Fränze there, but without success. The next morning, the two arrive at the agreed meeting point. Rainer is there, but alone, because the attractive Evelyn was invited to a hotel by a BMW driver. Kuß and Grille have already gone on to Nessebar and left a message to that effect in chalk on the steps. Jonny then continues alone and, by now in Romania, meets Shireen again at a kind of hippie camp. A young man there has caught a tortoise and wants to throw it into a pot of boiling water to make soup. Outraged, Shireen confronts him and just manages to stop him, after which the tortoise becomes the pair’s companion. Shireen increasingly introduces Jonny to esoteric ideas and tantric practices, though he cannot really relate to them. An erotic tension grows between them. When Shireen tries to give herself to him in a kind of ritual, with both of them already lying naked on the ground, Jonny ultimately refuses. Eventually, everyone involved arrives on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. Shireen and Jonny pitch the tent that Jonny and Ines had recently bought on a rocky stretch of shore. To demonstrate the timelessness of their existence, Shireen throws their watches into the sea. Ines, meanwhile, has arrived at her vacation hotel without Jonny, her parents, or her luggage. Listlessly and gloomily, she listens to disco music from her room and, out of frustration, goes along with the advances of a young Bulgarian seducer. However, she spontaneously turns down his invitation to spend a night of love together. As she walks along the beach at night, utterly lonely and sad, she runs into Kuß, whom she knows, and Grille, who have settled into a boat to sleep. The next day, the two find Shireen’s and Jonny’s watches while diving. Rainer and Fränze are there by now, too. Ines recognizes Jonny’s watch and sets off along the beach to look for him. She recognizes the tent, but unfortunately finds Jonny at exactly the moment when he and Shireen are cuddling naked inside it. The physical confrontation that ensues between the two girls turns into a full-blown scuffle involving more and more people, which the police eventually have to break up. Jonny accompanies Shireen as far as the Turkish border, where she continues toward India and must part from him. She says goodbye to her “little brother,” gives him the tortoise, and crosses the border. Lost in thought, Jonny makes his way back to Nessebar. Shortly afterward, Irene and Heinz Moldenschütt arrive there too and bump into each other by the roadside. Irene says goodbye to Otto Schmiedel and invites him to visit if he happens to be in Berlin sometime soon. However, each of the parents had assumed that the other had Ines with them. Irene then gives her husband a furious telling-off. When she also learns that her suitcase was stolen through carelessness at a station along the way, the situation escalates, and Heinz throws the rest of the luggage out of the hotel window. In the final scene, Ines and Jonny meet on the beach without showing any emotion. Ines hands Jonny his watch, and he thanks her and puts it in his pocket.