The Story of my Vintage Golana - nearly 50 Years in the Drawer!

Today I would like to tell you a special and very personal story of a watch. This watch is closely related to my first, greatest and still ongoing passion for music.

It was in the early 1970s. On the occasion of a visit to my aunt, who by the way was a very great and lovely woman, her partner gave me - I think spontaneously, because there was no special occasion - this watch: a gold-colored Golana with a gold-colored steel bracelet (I would rather say lead bracelet, which by the way did not match the watch: it was an 18 or 19mm bracelet, the lug of the watch has 20mm).

I was immensely proud of this special watch, but I couldn't wear it because the bracelet was much too large for my wrists; I was about 13 or 14 years old.

Shortly after, the music virus hit me and I wanted to become a guitarist! Andy Scott (The Sweet) and Ritchie Blackmore were my idols. After a concert guitar I already owned a very cheap (and admittedly very bad) electric guitar. What was missing for Rock'n'Roll was an amplifier!

My father, who was often stingy in small things, but very generous in big things every now and then, proposed a deal: he would fund me a guitar amplifier in exchange for my "gold watch". I accepted the offer, of course! After all, a cool kid doesn't wear a gold watch, and now nothing stood in the way of a great musical career! 😉

So we bought a mighty big guitar amplifier of the British brand Carlsbro. This was a transistor amp that was a pretty poor copy of the Fender Twin Amp. The watch disappeared into my father's nightstand drawer. I don't know if he ever actually wore the Golana- he was obviously just trying to do me a favor.

My father passed away in the late 80s and the Golana eventually migrated back into my possession. In some box, hidden in some drawer it outlasted the time ... until ... until it accidentally fell into my hands again last year. By now, my late but fierce tick for mechanical watches had become quite strong. I wound it up and it ticked away immediately! I was amazed! I gave it to the local watchmaker who cleaned and oiled it for really little money. He even cleaned the dial beautifully without destroying the old charm of the watch.

On the web, you can find almost nothing about the Golana brand. A few chronographs, but they look completely different, can be found in the depths of the internet. Using the image search, many similar and almost identical watches of various brands are displayed. So, apparently, this was a design that was in vogue in the 1960s or 1970s, but there was pretty much nothing to Golana!

By the way, a great guitarist did not become of me! After playing drums in a band for a few years in the early 1980s and then taking a longer break, I started playing electric bass in 1995, played in various bands and have been playing blues rock (regionally quite successfully) for 10 years.

Whenever I see the Golana, I have to think of the darned Carlsbro amplifier and especially of my father. Maybe my little music career would have been like this even without this watch ... but who knows?