This week Jenna and I had the pleasure of visiting NOMOS at both their Berlin as well as their Glashütte facilities. Read on for our impressions.
Day 1 Early Tuesday morning Jenna and I met up at Schiphol. After a smooth 1-hour flight we landed in Berlin, where we were picked up by our friend Rob Nudds of NOMOS. We immediately headed for the famous Brandenburger Tor - which is a bit of a tourist trap, but one that made for a nice and iconic backdrop for the photo shoot we had planned. After snapping a few pics at the gate we walked down Straße des 17. Juni to do the same at the Siegessäule (Victory Column), whose crowning statue served as the inspiration for the Tetra Goldelse. A nice and easy going start of our trip!     Of course we weren't just in Berlin to shoot pictures at famous landmarks. Rather we were there because it's where Berlinerblau is located, which is where we headed after a tasty lunch at a Thai restaurant. Berlinerblau is NOMOS' in-house creative agency, that does everything from designing watches to copywriting, social media, programming for the website, photography and much more. It's located in the Kreuzberg area, which is still a bit rough around the edges yet very charming and lively. At the Paul Lincke Üfer, on the banks of the Landwehr Canal, they have a few offices located over several buildings. These offices are quintessentially NOMOS and instantly familiar to anyone who has ever visited the NOMOS website; here huge windows offer a abundance of light and cool views over cute little courtyards; the furnishings are well-designed and cool; the overall vibe is relaxed and casual - yet it is very clear that good hard work is being done. In the run-up to BaselWorld they were slightly empty though, as most of the furniture is taken with for the booth.     At Berlinerblau we met up with Thomas Höhnel, senior product designer, who explained to us the process behind designing a NOMOS. We all know their watches are known for the clean cut lines and seemingly simple looks, and it's easy to think that this means that the process of designing them is equally simple. This is most certainly not the case! The simple & iconic look is result of careful and thorough thought, where every little detail is scrutinized to achieve an optimal balance between form and function, and an appearance that's always spot-on NOMOS. Take for example the Ahoi, a watch designed by Thomas. The Ahoi was meant to replace the Tangente Sport - which was only moderately successful. It had to be properly water resistant without becoming a dive watch per se; it had to follow the design codes of the original Tangente yet be different enough to stand on its own feet; it had to look and feel robust without losing the natural elegance of NOMOS. I think he managed very well, and if the sales numbers are any indication I am not the only one.     After talking Ahoi we dove into the recent Silvercut series, created to offer a more masculine option to counterbalance the softer Champagner models. These feature a silver dial with heavy horizontal brushing, which we were told was inspired by Silberpfeil racing cars with their unpainted aluminum bodies, professional tools and instruments, vintage radios, and other cool stuff. It was clear that they were proud and happy with the result. I happen to have spent some time with both the Orion Silvercut as well as its square-bodied sibling, and found the contrast between the tough industrial look of the dials and the timeless elegance of their cases very appealing indeed.     As noted before, Berlinerblau has a few separate locations along the Paul Lincke Üfer, so once we had wrapped things up at office #1 we strolled down the street to visit another one - which was the one with the famous blue neon Ahoi Glashütte sign. Again, in the run-up to BaselWorld next week they were pretty busy and we were asked not to take too many pictures as there was some yet-to-be-revealed stuff around, but to our great delight we did get to see the famous drawers that hold nearly every dial that NOMOS ever made - plus prototypes, design studies and whatnot. It was simply awesome, and for me one of the highlights of our trip. It was a bit of a bummer to see those drawers being closed again - I would've liked to spend a couple hours browsing them. Thinking about it, I could probably stay there a couple of days, just gazing over all those lovely little dials... But as we still had a two hour drive to Dresden in front of us it was probably for the better.     The drive to Dresden was smooth & fast - it's the famous Autobahn after all. There's not much to be seen in between the two cities, but Dresden made up for that big time. It's a beautiful city with an interesting mix of really old, sort-of-old, new-ish, and properly modern architecture. And thanks to Rob's somewhat limited sense of direction we got to see quite a bit of it even before we arrived at our hotel, which was located in the Aldstadt (old town) part of the city at just a stone's throw from the Frauenkirche. We checked in and got to our rooms to charge up for a bit before heading out for dinner, which we had in Neustadt (new town) at the other bank of the river. On the way there we got to enjoy a spectacular view over the city, which made me make sure my alarm was set just a bit early for the next morning to do a little walk in daylight.     The restaurant our NOMOS friends had picked for us was called Hierschönessen, which translates into something like Heregoodfood. The street on which is was located was interesting, with lot's of little bars and boutiques. Here we were joined by Mareike, who told us that the restaurant somewhat of a mythical place among NOMOS employees -especially female- as it is said that their crème brûlée is among 'the best ever'. I don't care that much for desserts myself to be honest, but I can confirm that the place lives up to its name. I highly recommend it should you find yourself in the area. This concludes day 1 of our NOMOS Glashütte trip. Stay tuned for day 2! Inspired? See our collection of NOMOS watches here!