In the immediate aftermath of World War II in Europe, Karl Kalle Blücher returns to the ruined city of Dresden and the crumbling cigarette factory where he once worked. The workers, facing a cold reality of hunger and reconstruction, assign him the task of securing carbide to replace a destroyed roof. The community is tight on time and family duties—everyone is married and must provide for their households—while Karl, who is single and a vegetarian, is seen as someone who can survive the road and feed himself along the way. The mission becomes not just a supply run but a test of luck, improvisation, and stubborn resilience.
Karl travels to Wittenberge, where his brother-in-law hands over seven 50-kilogram (110 lb) barrels but cannot assist with their transport. The return journey quickly spirals into a long chain of comic, if often hair-raising, misadventures. First, he meets a good-looking war widow named Karla who offers to put the barrels on her wagon and even invites him to her farmhouse for a night, and the two share a growing, if tentative, romance. He promises to come back after he completes the delivery.
A hitchhiking trek follows: he accepts a ride on a truck in exchange for his cigarettes, then, while waiting for another lift, he hunts mushrooms in the nearby forest. He doesn’t realize the woods are still mined, and only a warning from an old man saves him from danger. A second truck carries him farther in return for his foraged mushrooms. He finds what seems to be an empty barn and naps in the loft, only to be discovered by Soviet soldiers who confiscate him along with a hidden cache of Nazi food. The commandant who interrogates him believes his tale, but cautions that he needs proper permits from Dresden and Potsdam to transport raw materials across regions. Karl, however, persuades the captain in charge of supplies to grant him stamped written authorization and a cart for two barrels of carbide.
Hunger gnaws at him, and hunger leads to more audacious decisions: he decides to go fishing using carbide, a dangerous idea because carbide reacts when wet. The first barrel turns out to contain chalk; the second, carbide, and a miscalculated explosion draws suspicious Soviet troops back and lands him in custody again. He returns to the same commandant, who, this time, agrees to a new bargain: Karl can trade one more barrel for a 30-kilometer truck ride, provided he hands over the chalk-filled barrel.
Along this trek, the journey grows more crowded: a middle-aged singer is picked up, followed by Karin, a teenage orphan in pigtails determined to reach America. The trio discovers an abandoned boat and sets off down the Elbe with the barrels, but the singer leaves the next morning when they cannot secure the boat. Karl rows the barrels and the girl in hopes of making progress, yet a broken oar strands them on a concrete pillar of a wrecked bridge in mid-river; the boat drifts away, and Karin leaves him at dawn.
An American soldier appears in a motorboat, ready to help in exchange for a barrel, but crossing into Soviet-controlled territory is not allowed, so Karl seizes the soldier’s boat. He docks and encounters Clara, a middle-aged widow who tries to ply him with liquor; he ends up too drunk to sleep with her as she desires. One of Clara’s workers says he is the thirteenth man Clara has enticed. Two German ex-soldiers arrive and are put to work in the garden while Karl repairs machinery at a sawmill. One of the soldiers sleeps with Clara, and the next morning, the pair steal Karl’s remaining barrels, only to wake up just in time as Karl foils their theft.
Next, an undertaker offers a ride in exchange for a eulogy. Karl, ever the improviser, naps in an empty coffin and startles a hitchhiker when he emerges. At the funeral, the mourners vanish as the creaky pretence of respect dissolves into awkward silence. In a final scrape, a black market stop leads to an arrest, but Karl escapes and is recaptured; the man in charge suspects he is working for the Soviet occupiers, yet ultimately lets him go.
After six weeks of wandering and narrow escapes, Karl returns to the Dresden factory with two barrels of carbide. There, he discovers letters from Karla waiting for him, a reminder of the tenuous connection to the life he left behind. With a last borrowed bicycle, he begins the long ride back toward Wittenberge, carrying the memory of the people he met along the way and the stubborn hope that life on the road can still lead to a kinder return home.
