Schultze is a simple salt mineworker, who has spent his entire life near the review Saale in the former East German state of Saxon-Anhalt. He rides his rickety bicycle across the serenade landscape to and from the mines. He drinks beer in the local pub, fishes off a pier with his workmates Jurgen and Manfred, and watches them nearly come to blows over a chess game. For Schultze, that's really all the spice he needs. When he and his buddies are suddenly laid off at the mine and forced into retirement ten years too early, not even the polka music Schultze has played on the accordion since he was a boy can put the zest back into his life--but just maybe a little zydeco can! Wandering around his modest home, trying to find contentment in a life of leisure he never asked for, Schultze is channel surfing through radio stations one day when he suddenly catches an unfamiliar rift of music--lively music that puts a spring in his step that had never been there before. But what of polka? Try as he might, this zaftig salt miner, who has been churning out the same accordion music of generations before him, can't get zydeco out of his system. In an instant, years of music tradition tumbles as easily as the Berlin Wall, and much like that momentous event that brought Germany closer to the Western World, a tie forms between Schultze and America that simply has to be explored.