- Tabaluga is a little green dragon who sets on a poetic, yet adventurous journey to magical places on his planet and dreamworlds in space, in order to discover the nature of time and it's relevance for us beings on Earth.
- Imagine if you woke up one morning and you'd lost time. It was gone! Vanished! Simply nowhere to be found!
To be more precise, your alarm clock fell onto the floor when you woke up and it's stopped. All that's left are the hands poking out from its face like the bent prongs of a fork! Sure, that would be annoying but not the end of the world, you might say. You might say. But how would you explain that to your child, who's just learned to tell the time? A bit harder, right?
And there we are right in the middle of the story 'Tabaluga and the Signs of Time'. For that is just what happens to the little green dragon at the start of his new adventure. The alarm clock that wakes him up on time every morning falls on the floor and the hands stop dead. Of course Tabaluga thinks that time has stood still! But he learns better. A big rock by the entrance to his dragon's den tells him its own story, teaching him that time cannot be stopped, and is very powerful. And that although he, the stone, might exist for thousands of years, it can be a great burden becoming 'as old as the hills'.
The mayfly buzzing around the dragon's head doesn't know that kind of worry. As old as the hills? That hardly describes her. But her 24-hour life is well packed: she enjoys her time to the full until Arktos, the little dragon's professional opponent, appears, and ends her life with a fly swat: 'Whack!' A good-humoured stranger also turns up to explain to Tabaluga, who is horrified by this violent end, all about death and time!
Now the dragon can no longer be held back. He has to find out more about time. 'How can I get hold of it?' he asks the stranger. His pithy answer: 'I hear there are some people who believe you can buy time. Ask them yourself!' And he has gone.
The rich king of the animals, the fat-cat lion, gives Tabaluga a clear answer: 'Of course you can buy time! That's common knowledge: why else would people say time is money?! And he advises the dragon: 'Go off into the world and time will find you!'
So Tabaluga sets off to find time. On his way he meets another dimension of this strange entity, one that defies comprehension: the past. In a dream he meets his father, Tyrion, who assures him that time cannot be bought. He realises that Arktos is mixed up in things again when the snowman tries to get the Greenlanders to kill time which of course makes no sense at all.
Fascinated, he listens to what the Four Seasons have to say and, despite their great differences, stands up for his best enemy Arktos, rescuing him from mortal danger. The little green dragon lands in a bazaar, where he meets time sellers and is almost taken in by a merchant trying to sell him a life-lengthening magic clock. A carpet-seller catches his eye, unrolling before his eyes a carpet from which rises the delicate shape of a girl: one he has already come across several times as a shadow, a vision or in his dreams.
It is Time, who introduces itself to Tabaluga and grants him a wish. The dragon wants to dance with the love of his life once more. Time turns into Lilli, his ice princess, whom Tabaluga holds rapturously in his arms! The moral of this meeting is that time only stops in your dreams: 'Time knows no time: so much can happen'.
The story could easily end there: everyone clasped in one another's arms, happy and satisfied, just like any good fairy tale. But Tabaluga doesn't let his listeners go as easily as that. There is a thought-provoking ending, not to be given away here! This much can be said: everything in life has its time!
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By what name was Tabaluga und die Zeichen der Zeit (2014) officially released in Canada in English?
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