I’ve been getting around quite a bit this year! Following on from the reports from Munich and New York, I now have the third in my occasional series of City reports – this time on Berlin.

I worked in Berlin for about a year, but keeping office hours meant I never became as familiar with it from a watch perspective (or any perspective really) as I am with Munich. Nonetheless, I thought it would be a good idea to start in the same place – i.e. with the gold exchanges. The good thing about these is that they are pretty much everywhere, there’s no real need to search them out – wander round for long enough, and they more or less come to you... They must get a better quality of customer in Munich, though, as the few I visited in Berlin had nothing of interest, let alone any Heuers. They often seem to carry some of the minor fashion brand watches, though – I’m talking Guess, Diesel etc, that sort of thing. I don’t know what sort of value those brands get from this brand extension – the watches often end-up being sold cheaply in fairly low-rent shops, which I would think is not the image they want to portray. Seems like there are enough customers though – even though they could well be better off just buying a Swatch.

Much as in New York, there was something to be found in the department stores though. To be specific, in KaDeWe, the “flagship” department store in Berlin – it’s tagline of “the largest department store in continental Europe” always vaguely amuses me, with its implicit recognition that Harrods is larger. Not sure how big GUM is in comparison either, if we follow the lax definition of Europe that UEFA seems to adopt (Israel included???). Anyway, that’s kind of by the by. What caught my attention was the display in the windows outside. Each window was occupied by one or more Omegas, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. The watches were all on loan from the Omega Museum. KaDeWe seems to have quite strong links to Omega – they had an equally large display of some of the watches that were to be sold at Omegamania before that took place too. As soon as you went inside, it was clear that the theme continued, with a big display of both watches and moon landing paraphernalia.

Whereas the watches outside were models Omega had released to commemorate the landings, those inside included some of the watches actually worn by astronauts (it makes me wonder whether anyone visiting the Omega museum within the last few weeks noticed large holes in the collection – guess they have enough to keep coverage up, even with a significant amount out on loan).

There were astronaut watches from Thomas Stafford,

Donn Eiseles and Alexei Yeliseyev (though I guess that should be cosmonaut watch in that case),

as well as a JFK watch and the 18k gold Speedie offered to Nixon that he declined to accept.

Also, they had the Alaska Project 1 and 2 watches that Omega built to try and improve on the Speedmaster for space use (unnecessarily according to NASA!), which I found interesting - especially as I found the recent Alaska Project LE to be an attractive watch. The exhibition runs until 24th August, if you happen to find yourself in Berlin and have an interest in the moon watches - the fact it's in Berlin's biggest department store should keep the better half happy too!

There was a nice “newspaper” memorabilia item that Omega had produced too, with some moon landing details and a double-page spread of 36 Omega watches with a moon or space connection. I don’t really want it, so if there is an Omega collector out there who does, let me know and I can send it on (preferably in Europe, so the postage costs aren’t too high!).

KaDeWe finally has a TAG-Heuer concession too (previously it was only a couple of cabinets within the Christ concession in store, so a step up). Christ generally seems to have stopped stocking TAG, though, so that may be the reason. (Christ is a jeweller in Germany, if anyone is wondering what on earth I’m on about!). They didn’t have a limited edition Monaco, but had sold at least one according to the salesperson, who seemed to be filling in for a colleague so I wasn’t too sure on that one...

I was able to check out a handful of dealers too, but again with no luck on the Heuer front. I know Linckersdorff has several, but they were on holiday whilst I was there, so I wasn’t able to see theirs.

I did find this car, though, which would make the perfect accessory for the man sporting a ‘30s Heuer:

Or maybe those chronos are best reserved for the drivers of this 320’s more motorsport-related brother, the 328.

I then left the search for a while, but knew that come the weekend museum trips, there would be a flea market outside the Pergamonmuseum (if you’re in Berlin and can only visit one museum, I’d recommend this one – it specialises in truly monumental antiquities, which isn’t normally my first choice but these are truly impressive).

I’d been to this market once before, so my hopes weren’t particularly high. And so it proved. There was one seller with watches, and they were all of Russian/Soviet bloc provenance. Interesting nonetheless, with a couple of nice Poljot chronos.

Back on the train to go and get some lunch, I spotted a large market right by the Tiergarten station. So back there after lunch for a bit of a look around – had probably been up and running for too long for any bargains, but you never know... Immediately it was clear that there were more watches than at the other market – mixed between the stands with just the odd watch or two; those with a couple of cabinets of watches on their stall; and the final sort, that had lots of watches thrown together in a tray like some sort of horological pick-and-mix!

I sometimes feel that we’ve done too good a job of promoting and raising awareness about the Heuers and the bargains just aren’t out there any more. But not so much that, when I see a box of mixed watches like this, I don’t get a bit excited about the chance of finding a diamond in the rough (whilst, of course, maintaining the poker face so as not to alert the seller of any interest!). Nothing this time round though.

Onto the dealers. One had various bits and pieces, nothing of interest to me. Including a modern Panerai, where I absolutely cannot see the attraction – as far as I can see, these watches do nothing except “large”. And even that with very little grace. And they seem to be at least partly responsible for starting the oversized trend – which even Omega seems to have caught, judging by some of the oversized DeVilles in KaDeWe. The next dealer was better – a wide selection of (human wrist-sized) Omegas and lots of other interesting watches too. I thought one of them was a Pasadena at first, but it was in fact a Meister Anker lookalike. I have a feeling that we have come across some of these on the forum before?

And several Glashütte Originals. A couple of which had broken lugs. Which makes me wonder a bit to be honest. Glashütte Original as such has only been around since 1994 and has a reputation for quality, so what are two of them doing with broken lugs? I suspect that some of these are the predecessor company’s watches sporting –Original dials. Is this something our German-resident forum members have seen?

And actually the Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe (GUB) watches are pretty interesting in and of themselves anyway. A conglomerate of several watchmaking companies who happened to find themselves in the former East Germany after the second World War, including such luminaries as A.Lange u. Söhne as well as what would become Glashütte Original. The watches themselves seem to be pretty nice (apart from having lugs with a propensity for breaking, of course!). And we only need look as far as Zeiss Jena to see that being in East Germany needn’t necessarily mean the quality isn’t there. From what I’ve seen, they mainly seem to have produced three-hand watches, so my money stayed in the wallet but I did find them quite attractive – and not dissimilar to 50s-era Omegas actually. And possibly 50s Heuers too, but that’s the decade that time forgot as far as my knowledge of Heuers goes – it really kicks in with the 60s for me, but I’m more familiar with 30s and 40s watches than I am with those from the 50s. Barring some that Jarl has posted here and blogged about, I think I’ve only seen one or two on eBay and that’s the sum total of my knowledge. So if anyone has watches from, or info on, Heuer in the 50s, please post them, you’ll have at least one interested reader in me!

Some Googling back at the hotel turned up one of the (in-house, impressively) movements used in these GUB watches:

Amazing, a watch powered by Spezi! You’d have thought it would quickly become sticky and render the watch inoperable, but apparently not! Yes, I know that only makes any sense at all to our German readers but don’t worry, the joke is far too lame to translate/explain...

So another city that was a bit of a Heuer desert for me. Unlike New York, though (where ironically I did eventually find one Heuer), I get the feeling that they are out there – you just need to be lucky and in the right place at the right time. In part, this is down to Berlin’s nature as a conglomeration of earlier towns and villages without a strongly defined centre (I touched on this back in the Munich report), so it’s quite easy not to be in the right place...

Suggestions for the next destination welcome! And it would be great to see some more of these, sentiments that were echoed when I wrote the previous two as well:

Munich: http://www.chronocentric.com/forums/heuer/index.cgi?read=28084

New York: http://www.chronocentric.com/forums/heuer/index.cgi?read=29707

Jasper’s reports from the shows are great too, so let’s see more city and event reports, I know we must have people who travel and go to these sort of events frequently.

I should probably write one on London, I always dismiss that as it’s close to home...