At 40, Zosia has a happy second marriage, a well-adjusted daughter, a good career, and a comfortable home in Warsaw. But as she and her family usher in the year 2000, she wishes some things in her youth had happened differently, and she's magically transported back to 1987, when she was still married to her womanizing first husband, Darek and lived in the People's Republic of Poland.

Giordano, an angel assigned to an orphan in Krakow, is two years into the job when his celestial overseers, citing budget cuts, initiate "Phase Two" without telling him. Some changes are good - they send him a nanny, the enterprising Irena; some are bad - his phone number to Heaven no longer works nor do his special powers; and some dismay him - he grows a penis. His closest friend tells him to get a woman, and Irena advises him on hygiene. He visits a therapist, Roma, and falls in love with her. She tells him its transference. Meanwhile, Giordano's celestial friends conspire to rid Roma of her boyfriend, clearing the way for Giordano to be his naive and engaging self.

Anthropology professor Michal develops two overwhelming obsessions. The first one is a mummified, 3,000 year-old, perfectly preserved body of a shaman he and his colleagues have recently dragged out of a swamp. The second is an enigmatic student he meets by chance at a railway station.