Set shortly after the Berlin Wall falls, young Niyazi lives and works in West Berlin. But what he really wants is to go home to Istanbul as soon as possible. He comes up with a brilliant idea to save money for the trip faster. He will continue to work in the West, earning good money, but live in the East, where rent is cheap. He goes on the hunt for a girlfriend he can move in with in East Berlin. When an acquaintance introduces him to Klara at Alexander Platz, it seems like his dream has come true – Klara’s rent in East Berlin is just 28 East German marks. But she unexpectedly turns out to be rather reserved. Niyazi does his honest best to please her, but it is not until the next morning that she lets her hair down.<br /> In Jurek Becker’s short story, the immigrant “Romeo” could be from anywhere. In the film, Andreas Dresen’s film school thesis work, he has been deliberately turned into a Turkish lover boy. The story makes manifest the culture clash that East and West Germans will face after the border between the two is abolished. The film also documents symbolically freighted places in East Berlin in unembellished black-and-white, prefiguring their status as relics of bygone times.