If watches certainly tell time, they also, sometimes more importantly, tell stories. Deeply connected to their owners, they go through life, witnessing both times of peace and struggle, and carry the memories. Here’s one of these stories.

It began like any good road trip, a group of friends, a few cars, long roads cutting through Norway’s mountains. This time, we had left Oslo for Lærdal, a small fjord village where we rented an old yellow wooden house for the weekend. At dawn on Saturday, smoke woke one of us. Within moments, the rooms were thick with it, the stairwell barely visible, the air hard to breathe. We made our way out through the dark, still half-asleep and barefoot, into the cold morning.

Flames soon reached the top floor. In the rush, everything was left behind luggage, clothes, and on the bedside table, my Serica 6190. When the firefighters arrived, once the fire was extinguished, one of them went back in to retrieve our car keys. By pure chance, he also came out holding the watch, blackened and soaked. It had endured the flames and the firefighter’s hose, yet its heart was still beating. 

Days later, in Paris, Serica’s watchmakers carefully opened it. The movement was running strong, indeed. After a full service and cleaning, the watch was returned to its owner, barely bearing the faint marks of a night no one will forget.