I’ve crossed a lot of borders in my life, but I’ve never learned how to pack well. My bags are always a little off — too heavy, too light, too full of things I don’t need, too absent of what I wish I hadn’t left behind. I never get it right. The only constant, strangely, has been a single item that wasn’t chosen for sentiment but simply… stayed. The Victorinox 241693. A watch I bought for practical reasons and kept for reasons I still can’t entirely explain. I didn’t know, when I first fastened it around my wrist, that it would outlast cities, jobs, lovers, and phases of myself I no longer recognize. I just needed to know the time. I didn’t expect it would end up helping me know who I was.
Watches aren’t supposed to matter much anymore. The world has largely moved on. Time lives everywhere now — on screens, in cars, in voices that tell us what to do and when to arrive. But something in me resisted that. Maybe it’s my tendency to get lost, not in places, but in moments. Maybe I needed something that wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t distract, wouldn’t glow. The Victorinox didn’t demand attention. It just sat there. Steel and shadow. A red second hand that swept in quiet confidence. It was a kind of stillness I hadn’t realized I was missing.
The first country I wore it in was mine. Home, or at least the version of it I grew up in. I wore it to interviews. I wore it on buses. I wore it to funerals and to dinners where I didn’t speak much. It sat on my wrist during train rides where I stared out the window, wondering where I’d go if I ever had the courage to leave. And then one day I did leave — not impulsively, but not exactly planned either. And somehow, in the chaos of departure, the watch made it into my bag.
It became habit. Every time I arrived somewhere new, I reset the time. An hour back. Five hours forward. Depending on where I was. But the act — unscrewing the crown, pulling it just right, twisting gently — became something ritualistic. A way of reminding myself: this is where I am now. The body needs time to catch up to its location. The watch helped it get there faster.
I lived out of suitcases for longer than I expected. Guesthouses, shared flats, overnight trains. I wasn’t running from anything, not exactly. But I was always aware of the clock. Visa dates. Check-ins. The distance between home and whatever this was. The watch never seemed bothered. It kept ticking, always ticking, whether I was late, early, or suspended somewhere in the timelessness of travel.
Over the years, everything else changed. My clothes changed, faded, got replaced. My phone was stolen once in Lisbon. The notebooks I carried filled and were left behind. People came and went. Cities left their impressions — some deep, others more like light chalk on pavement. But the watch never seemed to age. There are scratches now, sure. One on the bezel from a motorcycle fall. A dent near the case that I don’t remember getting. But it still works. More than works. It keeps time better than I do.
What I’ve realized is that when you move often, you start measuring your life not in years but in transitions. When did I leave? When did I return? When did the air change? When did I stop calling that person? When did I start waking up without checking where I was? Memory becomes less chronological and more atmospheric. The watch became my one grounded thing — a kind of personal compass. Not pointing north, but always pointing now.
There was a time I considered getting rid of it. Not because it stopped working, but because it reminded me of a version of myself I wasn’t sure I liked anymore. I’d been in one city too long. Things had stagnated. I was still moving but only in circles. The watch — faithful as ever — kept ticking through it all, as if daring me to change something or accept everything. I left again not long after. The watch came with me. I didn’t ask it to. I didn’t even think about it. It was already on my wrist.
I’ve never been sentimental about objects. I don’t keep souvenirs. I don’t collect tokens. But this watch… it’s different. Maybe because it doesn’t pretend to be sentimental. It just is. It tells the time. That’s it. And yet, when I look at it, I remember walking through a dark Berlin street at 3 a.m. after missing the last tram. I remember a hot afternoon in Bangkok, the metal burning on my skin. I remember setting it forward in an airport bathroom while brushing my teeth, wondering if anyone would be waiting for me on the other side. It’s not the watch I’m attached to. It’s what the watch has seen.
Time is strange. When you’re young, it feels like something far away — a structure you’re expected to fit into. Later, it becomes pressure. Deadlines. Endings. Losses. And eventually, it becomes a kind of quiet. You stop racing it. You start walking beside it. That’s where I am now. I no longer count the hours. I feel them. I no longer ask what time it is. I ask what kind of time it is.
The Victorinox 241693 doesn’t try to answer that question. But it helps me ask it better. Its presence is a kind of stillness — not static, but calm. It marks the moment, not with ceremony, but with quiet persistence. There’s something deeply comforting about that. About something continuing, without needing to announce itself.
Now, years later, I still wear it every day. Not because it’s the best. Not because I need to. But because I don’t know what else would sit so easily on a wrist that has touched so many places, passed through so many airports, reached for so many hands, and let go of most of them. It doesn’t hold the weight of those moments, exactly — but it was there for them.
Someday, I’ll stop moving. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll always be halfway to somewhere else. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s this: when I check the time on that worn, quiet dial, I remember who I am — not in titles or history or geography — but in motion. In presence. In now.
That’s all the watch has ever given me. And it’s more than enough.