Postwoman Mrs Skorepa, her husband the ambulance driver Mr Skorepa and their eleven-year-old twins Petr and Pavel live in Prague in Malá Strana (Lesser Town), one of the Prague's historical and oldest quarters. The boys are crazy about cars and everything linked to them. They don't share their father's love of classical music. On the other hand, they are crazy about the newly announced scrap yard competition for paper collection. The lottery tickets awarded for every ten kilograms of old paper collected could win them a go-kart.

Set in the early 1930s, a young man finds a job as a dishwasher in a hotel and quickly works his way up the ladder. Loosely based on the novel by Henryk Worcell.