Poor Bibi - due to her bad marks in maths she has to spend the whole summer in the boarding school of Altenberg to scrape through a series of exams - otherwise she'd stay down in school, being forced to repeat the year. No camping, no white-water rafting, no vacation at all. So it doesn't surprise anyone that the young witch is quite disgruntled when arriving at Altenberg Castle. Her roommate is a touchy unpleassant fashion victim and headmaster Quirin Bartels is so muddle-headed that he can't even remember the names of his students properly. But then Bibi makes friends with Elea, a girl wheelchair-bound since a terrible accident where she also lost her beloved parents. Now Bibi is determined to help the sensitive Elea, searching a way to heal her from her palsy legs.
The twelve-year-old Emil and his father are haunted by bad luck. To take a break from a series of family disasters, Emil is allowed to spend a few days with a friend of the family, the female priest Hummel in Berlin. In the train he runs across the slick Max Grundeis who anaesthetizes Emil and steals his savings of 1500 DM. When he finally arrives in Berlin, Emil and a gang of street kids, led by the cheeky girl Pony Hütchen, try to find the gangster, who haunts the posh Hotel Adlon as a hotel thief. Meanwhile, to prevent anyone from finding out about Emil's mishap, Gypsi, a member of the gang of kids, passes himself off as Emil, thus wreaking havoc on the home of the priest.
