La dolce vita! Except life is anything but sweet for Jan (Kai Wiesinger), whose attempts to modernize an old luxury hotel in Italy are thwarted by the local competition’s mafia-like methods. Fortunately, help is at hand in the shapely form of Maria (Liane Forestieri), a German-Italian who originally came to fetch her young son. Together, they get the job done and, this being a romantic comedy, fall in love just as marketing director Susanne, who also happens to be Jans’ girlfriend, arrives to inspect the work. Her suspicions are soon aroused.
Although Frank and Beate are the last two real romantics under the sun, their love initially fails because of a hair-raising misunderstanding. Disillusioned, Beate turns her back on men and emotions to pursue a career as a sober business journalist. When she researches a dubious love novel author a few years later, she has no idea that her great love Frank hides behind her pseudonym.
Pauline is very disappointed by her boyfriend. Fearing lonely holidays, she accepts her boss Max's invitation to celebrate white Christmas in his parents' mountain hut. It is taken for granted that she is Max's girlfriend. He enjoys the misunderstanding and asks Pauline to play along.
A handful of disparate people in Berlin are drawn to the same residential hotel in the drama Downhill City. Finnish musician Artsi heads to Berlin in hopes of hitting the big time; needing a place to stay, he takes a room at the Downhill City Hotel and ties to find a market for his music. Meanwhile, another Downhill Hotel resident, aspiring author Fabien, meets a former convict named Sascha who has nowhere to stay and offers to take him in. Peggy, who works at a fast-food restaurant, is unhappy with her boyfriend Hans and finally kicks him out. Peggy meets Artsi when he stops by the burger stand one day, while Hans (who ends up crashing with Sascha and Fabien) starts a new relationship of his own with Doris.
