Truck driver Tschak (Goetz Otto) sees red when the bank wants to seize his truck and his wife Barbara (Susanne Schaefer), who lives apart from him, also claims sole custody of their son. Just on his birthday he picks up the unsuspecting Lukas (Max Riemelt) from school to go with him on a desperate odyssey through half Europe. But everything is a little different than expected: The mother has alarmed the police and attached herself to the heels of her fugitive husband, who threatens to fail in his recently accepted role as father: He and Lukas compete for a woman of all people, the young hitchhiker Marietta (Lisa Maria Potthoff), who turns their heads.