Having failed to get into the police force, Margarete takes up training as a security guard. One night she runs into a sexually agressive ex-colleague who insists on hailing a taxi to take her home to his place. Enter Tiger: short brown hair, a tough girl and a fighter, the cab driver. Realising that the situation is far from consensual, Tiger speeds off with Margarete, leaving her companion standing in the street. It won’t be the last time she rushes to Margarete’s aid. Tiger lives in an attic flat with two men. She knows how to wield a baseball bat. Stealing a uniform from security and renaming Margarete ‘Vanilla’, she begins to steer her life in a completely different direction.
Actor Ernst Stein, having abdicated from the stage in 1968 in protest of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, has long since retreated from the world around him. In a remote house encircled by an overgrown garden, he lives in a world of dreams and memories. Suddenly, in 1989, an out-of-kilter society sends forth its progeny. Young people, tramps and characters of all sorts take refuge with Stein for a short span, carrying the turmoil of the times into his house.
