Somewhere in Havanna on New Year's Eve, the engagement of Cuban Gladis to German Erik takes place. Both met on a hot and humid summer night in the Cuban provinces. As her family look on excitedly, Gladis receives Erik‚s wordy declaration of love and states her own willingness to take up his tempting offer to start a new life in Germany with her seven year old son Omarito.
 
In her twenty seven years, Gladis has experienced almost everything when it comes to men, from passionate submission to rockbottom despair. For some time, her philosophy has been: "when men start behaving badly, just kick them out." Gladis was not unhappy with her "girl power" image until the day when she met Erik in the disco in Camagüey. Over the course of the following two years the film tries to find out what was really going on in her heart at that time, which inner and outer motives she had for placing all her eggs in one basket and going off with a foreigner.
 
First of all, though, Gladis has to manage experiences such as getting married and getting hold of a visa. Harder than anything to deal with is the thought of leaving her beloved Cuba forever. She and her son Omarito set off for an autumnally rainy Hamburg in summer 2001, quietly wistful, but also optimistic and full of a thirst for adventure.
 
The first weeks are spent visiting parents, settling into school and dealing with bureaucratic affairs. For Gladis it is clear that even in this foreign country she has no intention of giving up her hard won independence. And she has to fight as hard to learn her first words in German as she does to resist being smothered by Erik‚s overpowering love. The initial euphoria is ground down in the ensuing daily clash between the two cultures and related communication problems. And when Gladis is one day confronted by her past, her relationship with Erik and her remaining in Germany are called into question for the first time. The new family‚s first Christmas together should pour oil on troubled emotional waters but the arguments break out afresh.
 
Erik and Gladis want to pull together in spite of all their difficulties and decide to try and escape into Spring in their winter holidays. They visit an old friend of Gladis‚ in Sicily, one who has been there for six years. Luisa comforts the battle-weary Gladis and gives her some valuable advice about how to proceed with her husband, child and in Europe. But even on their first holiday together, matters are overturned by events. And something finally happens that will give the lives of Gladis, Erik and Omarito a new direction.
 
We travel a part of their lives with the three of them, encountering along the way a lot of pain, melancholy and disappointment but also hope, happiness and a new kind of independence.
 
Inspiration and music by The Orishas.
 
Uli Gaulke & Jeannette Eggert