The film follows the difficult decisions facing passengers, most returning home, on a train from Munich to East Berlin on the day when East Germany closed itself off from the West. When they hear about the closure on the way, they have 3 1/2 hours to decide whether to stay on the train all the way to East Berlin or detrain in the West. Among them are a young pop group, successful in the East but returning from a disappointing engagement in the West, an old couple, who may never see their son again, a young family whose father dreams of a career in the West as an aviation engineer, while the mother wants to return to her father, a senior officer in the East German army and a young gymnastics champion and her trainer.