Athens, Plato’s Academy district.
A small, quiet junction with three tobacco stores and a dog. Stavros owns one of the stores. His wife has left him and refuses to come back; his mother has already had a stroke and he must take care of her 24/7. The favourite hobby of the three tobacconists is counting the Chinese, who are setting up their shop across the street. It is an everlasting hobby because the Chinese appear to multiply by the day. They only stop counting if an Albanian goes past them. Then, they bet on whether the dog will bark at the Albanian or not. This is their second favourite hobby. That is how they spend their life, idly and merrily, watching life go by, outside their stores. However, Stavros is constantly worried. He is inexplicably unhappy. At night, he suffers from insomnia, but he is not able to pinpoint what is wrong with him. Until one day, an Albanian, who goes past the three men (and gets barked at by the dog), recognises Stavros's mother as his own long-lost mother.