Geneva is home to numerous international organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations. There is evidence of this international flair wherever you go in the city. At the same time, with its location on the shores of Lake Geneva and view of the mountains, Geneva is a scenic gem.

Geneva is synonymous with quality Swiss watches and is the home of many renowned watch brands. The fact that Geneva has developed into a watchmaking city is, indirectly, due to the famous Geneva religious reformer Calvin. He absolutely abhorred any show of wealth in the form of gold or precious stones. Since Geneva was a centre for goldsmiths in the 16th century, they had to find a new line of business and henceforth devoted themselves to watchmaking. 

It takes four years to complete the course offered by the Geneva Watchmaking School. During this time, students learn how to make a mechanical timepiece right from scratch. Because precision craftsmanship is essential and every micromillimetre counts, the students spend the first year of their training making the tools that they will subsequently work with. This is intended to train their hands. Besarta Murti is an apprentice in her third year. A year ago, she was recognised as the school’s best student at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève.

One special quality feature of watches from the city on the Rhône is the Geneva seal, which has been awarded since 1886. This is a small but extremely significant embossed insignia on the back of the timepiece, which is now awarded by the Timelab foundation. Watches bearing the Geneva seal have not only been manufactured entirely in Geneva, but also meet strict quality requirements.

In their four years of training, Besarta Murti and her classmates make their own watch – referred to as the “school watch”. It takes a lot of time to build a watch by hand. Thus it is not so much an irony of history, but rather a nice coincidence, that the medium that captures something as transient as time requires time to produce it.

While Momo, the heroine of Michael Ende’s classic children’s story of the same name, goes on a quest in search of lost time, a trip to Geneva means a journey into the world of mechanical watches. As little mechanical miracles, they both record time and defy it at the same time. Produced as a result of countless hours of work, they combine the pulse of the past with the frenzied rhythm of the present.