Istanbul Xmas Event, 1 to 4-DEC-2005




From 1 to 4-DEC, the international Swatch The Club event took place in Istanbul, Turkey.  About 120 collectors from all over the world (Germany, UK, Switzerland, Spain, USA, Malaysia, Denmark, Portugal, Netherlands, ...) participated at the event. On 1-DEC in the afternoon, we met at the Marmara Pera Hotel in the new part of the european part of Istanbul.  The weather during the event was nice and warm (around 15 deg. celsius), with only some short rain showers.  Two weeks before the event, they had snow in Istanbul.  So we were quite lucky!


This is the view from my hotel window!

The welcome party started at 6pm...


... all the usual suspects :-) were there and it was a big 'hello' everywhere in the room.


Semra and Caro from Swatch The Club


Anja, Valter, and Michael



Patrick (head of Swatch The Club) gave his welcome speech

As a first surprise, we did not go to dinner directly but the buses took us to a huge and nicely decorated shopping center where we visited (guess what?).... a Swatch Store.


This is only the upper half of the huge xmas tree!!

In the store, we were allowed to buy the nice turkish surprise packaging without buying a regular watch.  Normally, you can buy these special packagings for around 30 EUR each if you buy a swatch from the current collection.  The packagings are sealed so you cannot check in advance which watch you will get.  The boxes contain watches such as Nisis (GE123), Kranaos (GK392), or Baggy (YLS4013).


The interest in these special packagings was huge, so the cashiers desk was crowded all the time.


This is the shop display for the 'surprise packaging' promotion


Some even opened the packaging!  What a shame :-)

After visiting the store, we went for dinner to the nice restaurant Venge where we were served traditional turkish food (not only Döner Kebab :-)


See more pictures from the Istanbul Xmas Event (Sightseeing on friday) on page 2 of my report.

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