Upon finding a book that relates his grandfather's story, an officer ventures through Spain meeting a wide array of characters, most of whom have a story of their own to tell.
To convince the prison warden against releasing him, a middle-aged Polish man recounts his life, one he considers to have been characterized by exceptionally bad luck.
Two strangers, Jerzy and Marta, accidentally end up holding tickets for the same sleeping chamber on an overnight train to the Baltic Sea coast. Also on board is Marta's spurned lover, who will not leave her alone. When the police enter the train in search of a murderer on the lam, rumors fly and everything seems to point toward one of the main characters as the culprit.
Based on a true story of Polish submarine "Orzel" (The Eagle): September 1939, "Orzel" is coming to Estonian neutral harbor in Tallin. Under pressure from Germany Estonians have intern the ship. Commander Grabinski decides to escape to England through the Baltic Sea, without any maps that has been confiscated and with only small amount of fuel on board.
A factory foreman discovers (to his discontent) that his housewife secretly takes driving lessons in order to get a job and send their son to kindergarten.
While visiting Warsaw, Hanka falls for a record-breaking bricklayer. Soon she returns to the city to work at construction sites and prove that women's work is not worse than that of men's.
