The inhabitants of Altenburg a downtrodden town in East Germany struggle to adapt to life without the Berlin wall. Each chapter is a story involving interconnecting lives trying to cope with the social changes thrust upon them in post unification Germany. There is a general feeling of hopelessness as the characters try to adapt to new challanges all around them

Henry Nelson arrived in Altenburg from Frankfurt in May 1990, a week after my nineteenth birthday. He was looking for real estate, and especially for construction sites along the town's access roads. It was all about gas stations.