@eduardmsmr

these days i found a long lost watch that i knew i had somewhere but couldn't remember where i actually put it. it belonged to my grandfather. after he passed, a lot of his things were given to me because my father (his son) knew how much i loved him and how much i still cherish him. so he gifted me a lot of his belongings, and this watch was one of them. it's a mechanical wostok, made in the ussr, sometime in the 80s. my grandfather worked at "6 martie" which was a factory in romania that was known for making bicycles and other civilian things. that's what was happening in front of the curtains, as behind them my grandfather was building projectiles, missiles, rounds and other weapons for the army. during communism, he worked closely with the romanian ministry of defense, which was something almost impossible to achieve. some of the munitions used on naval ships were designed and created by him (i still find this unbelievable). my grandma and my father told me he used to travel a lot (the uk is the destination i hear about most often) and he never told them where he was going or why. i found old pictures he had taken, official documents, and travel papers and when i put them together, i understood that these trips were tied to his work, to the development of these projectiles and everything else he was engineering. and i know that many might think that with a background like that i must have inherited wealth or privilege. but i didn't because my grandfather was incredibly kind-hearted. he could have had so much but he just made sure others around him were doing good and was content with what he had. that was who he was. so no, i wasn't privileged in that way. but i have things from him that no money could ever replace. and this watch is one of them. the brand is still around (Vostok) today and is definitely not among the luxurious ones, but the fact that this one comes from that era, from the 80s, and that it was his, makes it priceless to me. you'll notice that on my watch it says "wostok" and not "vostok" and that's because the w spelling was used on soviet era export models, the ones shipped to eastern bloc countries like romania. after the ussr collapsed, they switched to the v spelling. so the w on this dial is basically a timestamp and it marks it as a product of a world that no longer exists. this is definitely my forever watch and i wouldn't trade it for any luxury watch in the world. and it's mechanical, which means it runs on movement so for as long as you keep wearing it, it keeps going. i think he would've liked that.🌹

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