Widower Harald Rehm, owner of a Hamburg construction firm, goes on vacation to the Austrian Alps with his pre-teen son, Nils, and a governess, Margret, he has recently hired. But is it really a vacation? His whole crew is nearby, and appears to be engaged in building a power plant. The engineer, always addressed as Baumgartner, and a construction foreman, Burgstaller, are either hotel residents, or at least spend most of their free time at the hotel, in Burgstaller's case, flitting from one woman to the next ("it 's the season"). The plot points include (a) a previous job in which a retaining wall failed, killing several workers and blamed on Baumgartner; (b) A poor relationship between Rehm father and son (and between son and governess), which builds to a climax after Herr Rehm threatens to send Nils to a boarding school if he doesn't start behaving; Nils and a local kid take an action with potentially dire consequences, around which the last third of the movie centers; (c) a potential romance between Margret and Baumgartner, or is it between Margaret and Herr Rehm? It wouldn't be a Heimatfilm if you didn't stumble onto singing children in Trachten, and singing adults too, at the strangest times.