King & Emperor Swatch The Club Xmas Event
Budapest, Hungary, 30-NOV to 2-DEC-2007

Day 2:  City Tour Game, Store Opening, and more...

In the morning of 1-DEC, a city tour game was organized by the club.  About 10 groups had to solve riddles all across the city using the metro, a map, and (some groups) the internet via iPhone.  All groups had to solve the same riddles but in a different order.  So the different groups did not meet a lot during the game.  Our group was group #9 called "Skin".  We started near Erzsébet tér and made our way through the city...



.. to the beautiful Szent István-bazilika (Saint Stephen's Basilica):



Vajdahunyad vára (Vajdahunyad Castle) near the zoo

In the beginning, our group had real difficulties solving the riddles but at the end, we were able to answer all questions although we skipped a few metro stops.  Our printed travel guides (no internet!) helped a lot.  We also had to answer a few Swatch questions, for one of them, we called the Swatch Store in Frankfurt to confirm the answer (yes, there are five Puzzle Motion watches up to now). 

The city tour ended in the famous restaurant Mátyás Pince (Matthias Cellar). 



Nice food, good (not too loud) music, and even better:  our group won the city tour by just one point against Henk's, Michael's, and ... group :-)  We also learned on that day that the club year officially starts on 1-APR (remember the date of this year's Rome event?). 


We received a nice prize for each group member:  The Xmas special Winter Day (SUJW100S):
In the afternoon, Swatch The Club had arranged a nice surprise for us Swatch fanatics:  A new Swatch store (Boscolo Swatch Store) will open early next year (in February) or so, nearby the famous New York Palace hotel and the New York Café (located in the hotel).  For us collectors, an exception was made:  The store was opened just for us for a few hours, so we were officially the first clients of the store.  As you can see from the pictures below, there was a real rush to be the first in the queue :-)


The store itself did not contain any surprises or unknown specials except for this one:


Can you guess what it is? :-)

Each customer (and later also the non-buying club members) received a nice certificate:



Being a "certificated client" is something new, right? :-)

Afterwards, it was time for a glass of champaign at the New York Café, a really unique location:


In the afternoon, we had a few spare hours for sight seeing, shopping etc.  Or taking a bath in the Gellert Bath of the hotel.

At 19.30, it was time for the Gala Dinner at the Gellert hotel.  Everybody had dressed up nicely:


The gala dinner took place in the entrance hall of the Gellért Thermal Bath.  An absolutely unique location as you can see from the pictures below.  Time for a waltz, pictures, and more.



A glimpse into the bath


note the three chronos affixed to the red sash, simply beautiful!

The food was wonderful and after the main course, it was time for Skander to present the Xmas Club special 2007:


Antonio serves the special

Each collector received a very special Swatch:  it is released in an unnumbered edition of only 150 pcs(!) to commemorate this event:  The first ever Irony Lady special called Star Stones (YSZ100G):


So this is a very very rare watch.  Star Stones is a variation of the current Xmas Irony Lady Swatch Shiny Stones (YSS224G).  There are two differences to Shiny Stones:  The dial has a different color (pink instead of beige) and an additional star is affixed to the strap.  The packaging also fits very nicely to the watch:  It comes in a little red leather box (opened) carrying the logo of the event (the theme was "King and Emperor").  The leather box is packaged in a little red leather bag.  Very nicely done, as you can clearly see that a lot of thoughts went into this nice watch and packaging.


Big applause from the crowd!


The team of Swatch The Club

This time, the special was served to each collector.  We did not have to queue this time:


one...


...two...


...three:  everybody loves the special!

A great evening with super music and a happy athmosphere.

But there were also some more interesting things to see for collectors:  A "home made" Diaphane One Austria Gold, produced by Hermann from Austria in a limited edition of only one piece:  More than 100 grams real gold.  Fascinating stuff:


The evening turned into a disco party at the end.  The band was really super hot!

Thanks to everybody from the team of Swatch The Club and to the team from ixxalp for making this super event possible.  Budapest is a lovely city and we hope to be able to return soon!  But we will always have the unique Star Stones Irony special as a souvenir.

You can browse some other impressions/reports from this event at Matthias's webpage about Swatch or at Michael's nice webpage.
More pictures are here.  And here is the picture gallery by Dani Troll.

Andreas Wiethoff, 6-DEC-2007

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