A Lange Time Ago

A Cinderella story and my thoughts on press trips

I tend to mark the beginning of my freelance writing career as around 2008 when I started moonlighting for Gear Patrol, while still spending my days doing marketing for a small translation agency. But it wasn’t for another four or five years until I made the leap to full-time freelance. At the beginning, my work consisted of reviewing jackets, backpacks, gadgets, skis and other odds and ends. Soon watches followed and I was introduced to a world I never knew existed—that of the luxury press trip. And by some twist of fate, I had the good fortune to start at the top of the horological pyramid.

In the summer of 2010, I was invited on an all expenses paid junket to visit A. Lange & Söhne, in Glashütte, Germany. Keep in mind that at that time, my watch writing consisted of a few micro-brand “hands on” reviews and a lone “underwater” review of sorts in which I took a Doxa watch diving to the Jules Undersea Lodge, a retired-subaquatic-habitat-turned-hotel in the Florida Keys. I’m not sure I even knew what A. Lange & Söhne was. But all the same, I got an e-mailed invitation from Lange’s public relations person, requested a few days of vacation from my day job, and packed for… well, I wasn’t sure exactly what I was in for.

I’d studied German in college, ending up barely proficient enough to play a lead role in a German language play (Der zerbrochene Krug, in case you’re interested, and no, my performance does not exist on YouTube) so I was excited to travel to Saxony and try out a bit of my rusty Deutsch. I was on the trip with two other “journalists” (I’ve always wrestled with calling myself that), both equally green, and I can recall landing at Dresden airport and seeing a suited man holding a placard with my name on it, the first time I’ve experienced that. He grabbed my suitcase and beckoned me to follow him out to a waiting Audi A8 sedan with Lange branding on the doors. I was like an excited child and I remember asking him to pose by the car so I could take a photo of him and this Teutonic limousine sent just for me. Then he whisked me through the city to my hotel, an historic place in the heart of town. My room was huge and airy, with big windows that opened on to a balcony overlooking a quiet street. A small welcome card was on the table, alongside a plate of fresh pears, some chocolates and a bottle of something expensive left for me. This was truly like a version of Cinderella, with my carriage bearing the five rings on the radiator grille. In three days, that Audi would turn back into a pumpkin.

The trip consisted of a day in Glashütte touring Lange’s workshops (the horological equivalent of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory), some lavish dinners, a guided private tour of Dresden’s historic museums and old town, and a free afternoon during which I strolled the city, found a watch shop where I could practice my German and where I bought a vintage Glashütte Uhrenbetrieb (GUB) wristwatch to commemorate my first press trip. Two days later, I was back at my desk at home writing my marketing newsletter and sitting in on conference calls, dreaming of a small town in Germany.

My Glashütte souvenir (now gone).

My story about the trip was published on Gear Patrol a week or two later, and soon after followed more invitations to more exotic locales, fabulous watches, and high calorie meals. But, similar to your first kiss, your first car, or your first watch, that first press trip remained special to me. It’s funny, because of all the watch brands I could have covered, the one that stands out is the one least in my personal wheelhouse, or budget. I’ll never own a Lange, I’m fairly confident of that. But the fact that they took a chance on a very inexperienced writer from a then small online publication made an impression on me. Of course, seeing how those exquisite watches were made did too. I’ve revisited Lange, both on the page, and in person, on several occasions since 2010. A second trip to Glashütte, again with Gear Patrol, yielded an incredible video feature, Saxon Snow, shot and edited by Eric Yang, GP’s founder, who accompanied me. On that trip, in December, we were loaned a BMW 6-series, in which we toured Saxony on snow covered roads, leading to my very first (of few) car reviews. And years later, I was in Iceland with a Lange contingent for some glacier hopping and Blue Lagoon soaking (strangely incongruent, I know).

An exquisite week on the wrist.

I consider myself very fortunate to have had those, and many more amazing trips on the proverbial dimes of Omega, Rolex, Richard Mille (diving in St. Barts!), Oris (skiing in Zermatt!), Seiko (Japan!), IWC, Blancpain, and many others. I’ve literally seen the world on the back of my English degree and the good sense I had to start writing about wristwatches instead of something else. In addition to seeing amazing places, I got to meet interesting people, both famous and not so famous, and some connections led to other work that, as a freelancer, was important. On a sailing trip in Portugal a year after that first Lange trip, my baggage never arrived. Fortunately, IWC, the trip’s sponsor, gifted us all shirts, shorts and boat shoes, which came in handy while out in the Atlantic learning how to use a sextant, but less so that evening for the formal dinner, where I was forced to wear the zip-up sweater and khakis I’d worn on the plane. It was that evening that I first met Jack Forster, then editor-in-chief at Revolution magazine. Jack was impressed not by my writing skills but by my sanguine attitude about my travel and sartorial woes, and he offered me a gig writing a regular dive watch article in his monthly magazine.

I relate these experiences not to impress you or make you jealous. And in fact, it’s rather awkward now to state that, at some point, press trips made me uncomfortable. I don’t want to seem retroactively ungrateful, but, I mean, how can you write an unkind, honest word about a watch from a brand that takes you on a two-week liveaboard dive trip? In addition, it started to feel a bit unoriginal to be there, standing alongside a number of other writers, all taking the same photo of the same scene, knowing that we’d all dutifully go home and write our versions of the experience which would be published in a half dozen publications two weeks hence. I started to seek more original adventures with watches, even if that meant doing it at my own expense and, hence, in decidedly more Economy class.

Iceland, with Lange.

And so, I forged my own path, first for my “Bottom Time” reviews in Revolution, where I’d take different dive watches on my own vacations and take them deep, then for various quirky adventures for other publications—driving around Lake Superior in a loaned new Volvo SUV, diving the wrecks around Isle Royale with a Seamaster, or hiking in Colorado with an Oris altimeter watch. I began to get more choosy with the press trip invites, risking being blacklisted as the guy who turned down an offer. I think it was the right choice, even if I’ve had to sit back with some mild FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) while others jetted off to far flung places for exclusive access to Formula 1 paddocks, A-list celebs, and Spitfire flights. Of course, nowadays, not really writing for big publications means I don’t get invited anymore. My writing feels more honest for my loyal but modest Substack audience. That’s not to say I’d turn down every press trip opportunity if I do get invited again, but it’d have to be very, very special, or have an angle I could make my own. And of course, if Lange came calling again, I might be tempted to make just one more trip to Glashütte, you know, damit ich mein Deutsch üben kann.