One day out of the 10 or such that I spent at my parents’ place during the holidays, we took a train to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a town in Bavaria. We had a nice afternoon walking through the old town, taking a closer look at some of the buildings (including the incredibly old library, and the newly renovated church), and had coffee and cake that could have been a full meal.

The initial plan also included to search for some geocaches, but as my Dad wasn’t too excited about watching me look for tiny containers “for nothing”, I decided to rather have a nice afternoon with my parents 🙂

And of course, I took a couple pictures, so you get something out of it, too!

The poem on the wall reads:

Dreifach ist der Schritt der Zeit,
zögernd kommt die Zukunft hergezogen,
Pfeilschnell ist das Jetzt verflogen,
Ewig still steht die Vergangenheit.

Keine Ungeduld beflügelt
Ihren Schritt, wenn sie verweilt.
Keine Furcht, kein Zweifel zügelt
Ihren Lauf, wenn sie enteilt.
Keine Reu, kein Zaubersegen
kann die stehende bewegen.

Möchtest du beglückt und weise
Endigen des Lebens Reise
Nimm die zögernde zum Rat
Nicht zum Werkzeug deiner Tat.
Wähle nicht die fliehende zum Freund,
nicht die bleibende zum Feind.

In short, it says that time has in 3 different velocities: Future arrives hesitantly, Present flies by fast as an arrow, and Past stays ever the same. There is no way to speed up the lingering, no way to slow down the rushing, and no way to move the stagnant. So if you want to be happy at the end of your life, don’t make the Future your tool, but rather your advisor, don’t be too fond of the Present, and don’t make an enemy of the Past.