Viorel, a 17 year-old high schooler, gets a telegram at the dorm that his grandfather is dead.

On the train ride to the funeral, Viorel relives the last days spent with his grandfather while on vacation.

One morning, after a drunken spree, the grandfather wakes the boy up at the break of dawn and takes him up a hill, where a tall poplar tree stands. The old man, without giving a reason, asks the boy to dig up the tree, roots and all. What Viorel find under the tree will be a good surprise…