A work that, according to the filmmaker, bears the same relationship to reality as medicinal schnapps bears to potatoes. The plot, which defies linear description, concerns a consumately alienated gear-works laborer (Achternbusch) who dreams of Japan, and one day sets out for that far-off land with only his stuffed dog and his piggy bank. Along the way he encounters the German Prime Minister, and thus begins a spiralling subplot that leads into a modern-day forest primeval, whose trees have been destroyed by acid rain but whose spirits thrive at the Wanderkrebs Inn. Achternbusch's absurd imagery is strangely moving in its fusion of a Chaplinesque vision of Modern Times with classic German literary themes, from the Romantic longing for foreign climes to the "underground" world of the forest people. German film critic H. G. Pflaum writes, "This film ultimately concerns the 'abolishment of life' against which Achternbusch anarchistically and grotesquely protests."