From 27 to 30-APR-2013, the traditional Swatch The Club Gold & Pioneer event took place in Strasbourg, France, and Basel, Switzerland.  About 140 club members from all over the world participated at the event.

We met on saturday, late afternoon, at the *****-hotel Sofitel Strasbourg Grande Ile. a nice hotel in the heart of the city.  Lots of familiar faces, everybody was happy to meet again, smiling....

The dinner on the first night took place at the hotel (very comfortable!).  The motto of the night was:  "Swatch 30th anniversary birthday party".  So everyone got a funny little hat.  Each hat had a small number inside, with the number for the traditional G&P kiosk two days later.  Dennis seems to get the second to last one below?!?

We had a very special guest this night:  Sabina (who had been working many years for the club and who is missed a lot :-) is now back from her long trip.  Apparently, Dani and Idda were very happy to see her again (me too!).

The dinner room was decorated accordingly for a funny party!

Yowza!

New Gold Member Torsten

Swatch COO and head of Swatch The Club, Reto Stöckli, opened the event with a welcome speech and he looked back to the first years in Swatch history (early 1980s).

His slides contain a few bits of information that I have not seen anywhere else before (besides a lot of well known stuff).  Check it out for yourself below:

Swatch = "second watch" (not "Swiss watch"!)

page 257 of the December edition of "Texas Monthly", you can check it out on Google Books! :-)  Great info!

I have left out the slide which should have shown the Swiss leaflet for 1983 Swatch watches (I haven't seen one so far, does it exist?).  Instead, it showed some watches from 1984/85.  Bzzzt.

So it was time to party!  Lots of funny faces!

Swatch had also invited some jugglers to entertain the audience:

This is TOO funny to censor :-)

And as a final highlight, a Swatch birthday cake was brought out, cut into pieces by Reto, and distributed among the audience.  Very yummy!

Click here to read page 2 ("Gold & Pioneer Rallye Strasbourg") of my Strasbourg/Basel G&P Event 2013 report.