Wie füttert man einen Esel (1974)

Long-distance truck driver Fred and his co-driver Orje have a job that takes them from East Germany through Czechoslovakia to Bulgaria. In Prague, their articulated lorry collides with the egg truck driven by the young Jana. In the accident, Orje swallows his little harmonica and has to be taken to hospital. As a replacement, Jana is assigned to Fred after volunteering in secret, in place of Pepi, whom they already know but who is supposedly ill with Hong Kong flu. Fred is less than pleased. The two now take turns driving. Fred uses longer breaks mainly to visit his numerous girlfriends in various cities, keeping a record of them in a little red notebook. Jana acts tough. But when Fred has her drive up a difficult mountain pass, she eventually breaks down: she is only a woman, she has never driven a heavy truck before, and he only let her take the shortcut because he knew she would never manage it. In the end, the two nevertheless reach their destination in Bulgaria, where the workers at a chemical plant in Varna are already waiting for them. That evening, the workers throw a party in their honour. During the traditional kissing dance, Jana kisses Fred, but later that night, when she asks him to unfasten her dress, he fails miserably. The next morning, the workers give Jana a little donkey, and Jana, the donkey and Fred set off on the return journey. Fred has changed. He visits a family he is friends with; Jana only gets to see the wife, which merely confirms her negative opinion of Fred. But when Fred gives her flowers a little later, the two grow closer for the first time. They plan to spend the night in a hotel room, but a burst pipe plunges the place into chaos. In the end, they both find themselves at a police station, and the night ends differently from what they had planned. At a second stop in Debrecen, Jana thinks Fred wants to visit another girlfriend, but he only stops in to see a friend whom Jana also knows from Prague. When Jana sees this, she too gets out of the truck’s sleeping berth, and she and Fred spend the night together. The rest of the journey to Prague goes without a hitch. Fred throws away his little red notebook and asks Jana to be his co-driver from then on, since Orje wanted to drive domestic routes anyway. The new Nusle Bridge embodied the desired optimism about the future in 1974—today, high fences have been installed along its sides. Getting rid of the little red notebook is not quite so easy, and it leads to a lovely final scene. Fred symbolically throws his old life out of the truck window, ostentatiously, right in the middle of Prague. On the new Nusle Bridge, the police stop him and, to his surprise, cheerfully hand it back. He carelessly drops it onto the pavement again, and a woman brings it to him. This time, he tears it in half and throws the pieces off the bridge together with Jana.