Watchmaker's

When Mr Silviu works one can hear only the clocks ticking. A song appreciated so much by the watch-menders. If you happen to be in the shop at any sharp hour all sorts you will hear all sorts of clocks from all sorts of unusual places. The workshop is very easy to find beacause is right on Calea Mosilor. At the entrance one can see written that this is also a workshop for jewlery but for now the jewler mender has paused his activity.  

In Kogalniceanu Square is located the watch shop of Mr Radu. Cuckoo clocks, pendulums all start ticking at once at the exact time. The watchmaker is sitting there next to them, wearing a white robe decorated with clock mechanisms on the front pocket, he repairs watches, changes batteries or reshapes clock mechanisms. Mr Radu has received this craft as a present from his father and even now he does it with passion. The watch-mender he made this routine that in every country he visits at least one watch mender shop, because he feels that he still has things to learn, and also because he believes a craft is to be “stolen”.

In Piata Romana, right in the back of the flower shop from the columns area, there isn’t just your ordinary watch repair shop, there is a truly pasionate watch mender, Mr Dan, thathas been doing this job for more than 30 years. You can easily say this about most of the watchmenders, but if you take a close look in the shop you will notice coackroaces, buuls, bees, ships, placed neatly on the counter, like true sculptures made entierly out of reused watch parts. It’s impossible to do this without rigor, atention and a lot of patience and Mr Dan does it out of passion. “Even in a silly test from the internet – what were you in an after life- my husband turn out to be again a watchmender” jokeingly said the wife of Mr Dan.  

We all have around the house a watch from our grandparents or perhaps gifted from someone close to us, perhaps bought by ourselves. Whether you change its battery, or its strap, its face or service the whole watch , Mr. Andrei is the perfect craftsman for it. He follows the family tradition, continuing the craft practised by his father. Crammed between a food store and a photocopying place, you need agile eyes to spot it.

 At the main entrance, on the left, in the SIR Complex, works Mr. Moldovan, a watchmaker from the 70s. Mr. Moldovan knows very well the system of trades, during the communist period, he went through all the stages of specialization, working both in the village and in the city.  

The great number of advertising on this side of Academiei Street, some of which for places that don’t exist anymore, makes the clock-fixing workshop hard to find. Across the street from St. Nicholas Built-in-a-Day Church we can leave out watches and glasses frames to be fixed by trustworthy hands.