Welcome
to the wwworld of NCK
Willkommen in der Wwwelt von NCK
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Edition: 2003-08-03 |
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All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words: ICH BIN EIN BERLINER! (JFK, June 26th, 1963)
40 years and one day later: Swatch invited the Club Members to Berlin. What an historic dimension J! And what a famous and also historic place where the main attraction took place: now called the “Schlossplatz” it is / was the place in front of “Honecker’s Lampenladen”, or, in other words: the GDR-“Volkskammer”, “Palast der Republik”. Here tons of sand and a stadium around was our goal. Or is the word “net” better? It was not soccer what played there – it was Beach Volleyball.
Also our hotel is a historic place… the “first” hotel in the former GDR direct at “Alexanderplatz”: the now called “Park Inn”. Here we met on Friday evening. A room in the 9th floor gave us a fantastic view over the – today everything is “famous” – “Berliner Himmel”, the train-station “Alexanderplatz” the TV-Tower and the Berlin Dome. But we were not in Berlin to stay in the hotel-room. Semra already wait for us at the bar, she held a welcome speech and we got a drink and some Goodies.
An exceptional place for dinner Swatch
promised us – and they were right! Slumberland was the pub where we had dinner
and drinks, drinks, drinks and (African) beer, beer, beer… Reggae-Music and
sand on the floor and it was nice, nice and nice. And tell me: am I drunk? Definitely I was drunk there – as
far as I remember…
One result of drinking probably too much was that I saw a hallucination – I thought… but, lucky enough, all the other members had the same “problem”. The TV-Tower was illuminated with the Swatch-Logo! What a big surprise! And what a superb idea! We saw the Logo first time when looked outside the bus-window; we did not believe what we saw. A short walk from the hotel to the place in front of the tower and we saw the next surprise: “Willkommen in Berlin Swatch The Club all over the world…!” – illuminated on the roof of the “Marienkirche” next to the TV-Tower. Later on the “Skyball”-SkinChrono was also on the concrete of the TV-Tower. This was a real highlight – you see, which company or person get permission from the state to do something like that? Swatch did not asked, they have done it – positive provocation. Did someone complained? Newspapers wrote about, the council was angry – who cares? No one was harmed, so why making trouble?
In a good mood we went to bed. Best requirements for the next day: we should play Beach Volleyball… in 8 teams, per team 4 persons. So a bit easier than normal Beach Volleyball – here a team has only 2 people. It was hot and the sun burnt… nevertheless one player wore the bathing cap from the C-Monsta-Special! At the end our team “won” the seventh place. More important than the result was the fun, and we had a lot. The winner team got Swatch Volleyballs, and flip-flops, the second and third team also things like that. Here we also received the Event-Special: The Cut Shot with a loop saying “Grand Slam Berlin 2003”. It comes in the normal sale-box with a paper-sleeve we also got in Gstaad. This watch is for a collector more important than lunchtime… Swatch organized an barbecue for us at the playground.
Later on we drove back to the main-court of the tournament. Here we had the chance to see the women finals or to go to an alternate and free programme… CSD at the “Siegessäule” and “Strasse des 17. Juni”. I personally decided to see some sissies, leather men and other people falling out the birdcage under the rainbow-flag. Still there were a lot of people who joined as spectators the Beach-Volleyball-Finals.
In the evening we met again at the hotel to drive to “Segelschiffrestaurant Klipper”. This is a nice restaurant on a boat where a big buffet was organized. Everyone got a flower-chain like in Hawaii. Here – in Berlin – also some Pro-Team-Members and Swatch-Staff-People from the German Headquarter and from some Stores like Berlin and Dresden joined the party. The feeling was like in Hawaii. A DJ played good music, some people danced; other people asked the Swatch-Staff questions…
I don’t think that anyone from Swatch will announce officially the number of produced “Shaq 34 Gold” – here I’ve heard from a very low concrete number (less than a x-mas-Special limitation: 7000), but with the one restriction: this is no official information and no names. It was very interesting for me as a collector and hopefully also for the sales-persons from Swatch. For me personally the evening ended at midnight because I had too much sun and less sleep than needed. The last bus back to the hotel drove at 2:00 a.m. in the morning I’ve heard.
“Generously” it was allowed to sleep Sunday morning till around 10:00 a.m. J! Packaging of the suitcase a fast breakfast and soon we were again at the Centre-court and the Swatch-Tipi. Here we got tickets for the men-contest of the Beach-Volleyball, a lunch-package for our journey back home and finally we had the chance to buy a special package of the “Skyball” Skinchrono limited to 111 pieces. Also a contest was organized where everyone was able to throw a Volleyball in a net – Swatch measured the speed. People who reached a definite speed got a T-Shirt. Smart – also a Sponsor – gave T-Shirts away without winning a contest. But at the end there were still more Swatch-T-Shirts around than from the carmaker…
I missed the whistle Swatch gave away after the final because I left at noon and the referees did not allow to distribute them until the Beach-Volleyball ended. But unfortunately I had to leave so early.
Meanwhile the FIVB-World-Tour was in France, Portugal and Austria – and every organized Swatch-Event there I missed. This is very sad for me, but definitely sometimes I have to earn money…
Thank you Semra, thank you to all the others from Swatch. We’ll meet again for sure. As every time it was a great pleasure to join a Swatch-Club-Event.
Watch out for the pictures I will include when time will allow. Come back in a while or join the Photo-CDs and the poster we got from The Club.
© & ® 2001 by NCK