Vienna 1937. Franz, 17, is an apprentice in a small shop selling newspapers, magazines and tobacco products. It is here that he also learns about life and love and all the pleasure and pain it can cause. As luck would have it, he can ask an expert who happens to be a regular customer: Sigmund Freud, 82. But women are as much a mystery to Freud as they are to Franz. Franz, his new friend Freud, the young Bohemian girl who Franz loves in vain and his invalid and courageous boss all get caught up in a dramatic vortex of events because "this ole world of ours ain't built that way" (Brecht).