The 1880s. Abandoned by his middle class parents in Stockholm, Johannes grows up in the countryside with a cobbler who regularly beats him up. Also at school he has to face regular beatings because of his Stockholm background, the only one who cares for him is a girl, Lotta, who promises to marry him one day. When he's 20 he moves to Stockholm and joins the Royal guards at the Royal palace. Quite by accident he meets Lotta again and start an affair with her. Plot by Mattias Thuresson.
The rich, aristocratic Katarina Hassel have an architect renovate her mansion. Katarina fall in love with the young architect, Gunnar Stenwall. Alas, he doesn't fall in love with her. But perhaps if Gunnar would meet her identical sister, who works in Stockholm as a waitress, he would fall in love with her instead? So Katarina travels to Stockholm to act as her non-existing sister.
Maria has been fired from her job as a householder with a family in a small town in Sweden. She leaves in anger for Stockholm, aiming for a career as an actress.
An artist lives with his wife in a large house on the countryside. She is bored, longing to return to the city and her life as an actress. She leaves him. He falls in love with a young girl, not knowing that the girl is his wife's daughter.
Celestin is the singing teacher in a monastery and Denis is one of her students. They both dream about the life outside. (It's a Swedish version of the famous vaudeville-opérette "Mam'zelle Nitouche").