Berlin, 2003. Hotel manager Eva Sahlmann begins her “happy day” with an event that troubles her. She has refused to accept a rose and letter from a page-boy that was given to him by a chauffeur, ordering the boy to throw both away.
Right now, her mind is on the closing of a conference organized by Boston Bearfield Investment for several international companies. But when the most powerful American in the room has to leave the hotel, she recovers the letter and finds in it a note with some information written on it. Eva calls a taxi and leaves for an address in East Berlin, where she is awaited. The meeting brings
her back to 1985, when in Linz she as a student had met the young mathematician George from East Germany at a Brückner concert. Afterwards, they exchanged letters regularly until Eva moved to Berlin to be near George. When GDR officials hindered contact on bureaucratic grounds, they had to wait until the wall came down in 1989 to celebrate a short reunion – before George departed for the United States at the request of an uncle. Years later, they met again briefly in Linz at a Brückner concert. Then the contact was broken off again – until this “happy day” in Berlin, when George sent her a note to meet her at their old rendezvous in East Berlin …