“When I was 18, my mother went on a package holiday and didn’t come back for 15 years,” says filmmaker Susanna Salonen. She takes a witty and critical look at her mother Riitta, who writes home from the other side of the world: “Dear child, do you know how they celebrate Christmas in Australia? You take some cans of beer and a Christmas tree to the beach and then you decorate the tree with the empty beer cans.” Riitta returns to Lübeck after spending 13 years in Australia but no longer feels at home in Germany, fails to find a job and decides to return to her real home – Finland. The film starts as she arrives there. Salonen asks her mother, “Can’t you think about your work or your pension?” Sometimes the roles of mother and daughter seem to be reversed. Eventually, the mother finds a low-paid job as a telephonist, but she has only just settled into her new flat when she decides that Finland is not her home after all. Riitta starts dreaming of Italy ...