Hands-On Heading Home With Glashütte Original's Senator Cosmopolite

The Glashütte Original Senator Cosmopolite was released five years ago. I can only speak for myself but I will admit I didn't really understand the watch – or even the brand itself, frankly – until I took the watch back home. Not my home, to be clear, but Saxony, the state home to the heart of German watchmaking: Glashütte. The area around Glashütte does remind me of my own home area in Wisconsin in a way, agrarian with rolling hills populated by stern and hearty people, so it was with great comfort that I wandered around a country I'd never visited before.

Meanwhile, the town itself is a fascinating place where the histories of brands like Glashütte Original, A. Lange & Söhne, Tutima, and others intertwine. All were massively impacted by the history of East Germany bringing them together under a nationalized corporation – Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe or the GUB – then went apart as many watchmakers forged their own paths after the fall of the Berlin wall and founded once again the brands of the past. All the while, Glashütte Original continued on.

Yet today the brands remain so close geographically that it barely takes even two steps to walk from one brand to another. Glashütte Original has capitalized on its history and strengths as a movement and dial-making powerhouse in recent years to make some truly cool watches, like last year's SeaQ diver's chronograph. But, when traveling back to Glashütte, it made sense to reach for a travel watch.

I really didn't have much idea of what I was in for with the Senator Cosmopolite. It was a fantastic watch, but on paper the 44mm wide and 14mm thick measurements made it a tough sell for someone who loves a smaller, thinner watch. Even viewing pictures of the movement didn't sell me much more. It was, of course, beautifully finished with a three-quarter plate movement typical of Glashütte watchmaking, a hand-engraved balance bridge, and Duplex swan-neck fine adjustment, and the micro-rotor was a nice addition (albeit not quite micro-looking on the 39mm movement). But what I was really looking for was some indication of the complexities underneath. The "cool" factor went way beyond the dial.

Maybe it's hard to really understand why the Senator Cosmopolite is truly as good as it is but let me try to explain it to you. First, you need to look at the dial to understand what you're in for. The watch tackles travel time with two separate sets of hour and minute hands, one set on a small subdial at 12 o'clock with your home time (with a power reserve indicator and a small aperture to show day or night time in the home time zone). Then, as usual, you have another set of hands in the center that are your "travel" or "current" time zone. You'll also notice a "big date" and a day/night indicator at nine o'clock on the dial and two windows for a Daylight Saving Time timezone and Standard as well. Too much information to process, you might think, but it's much simpler than it sounds.

Setting the watch is easy. Let's start clockwise from the top right crown. Set your home time at 12 o'clock with that crown, making sure to pay attention to the day/night indicator. On the bottom right crown, you can set your local time, but that's when things get fun. You'll notice the minute hand in the center will jump in 15-minute intervals, giving you the option for quarter or half time zones. If you live in or travel to India, New Zealand's Chatham Islands, or any of the other timezones with an odd offset, not only do you have a rare great option for a travel watch, it's one with a satisfying jump of the hands.

The crown on the lower right of the dial sets whatever of the 35 time zones you are in based on one of their major airport codes. Just be careful to, unlike me, remember if your time zone is in Daylight Saving (or even maybe consider to, you know, set it to your travel time zone). Also at nine o'clock on the case is a small pusher to set the date. It really is a simple four-step process but one that results in an incredibly useful travel watch.

I hate to admit it, but I struggle with mentally converting 24-hour time, so when I look at a normal GMT, I have to do a little math ("uhh, what's 17 minus 12 again?") and math was never my strong suit. Admitting that struggle publicly makes me feel only marginally more idiotic than the actual struggling does in the moment. Here, as I walked through some of the sights of Saxony (whether walking across the Bastei rock formation high above the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, or visiting the Königstein Fortress, one of the largest hilltop fortifications in Europe), I could tell what time it was at home and where I was. It's something you sometimes take for granted if you've been traveling so much you barely know what planet you're on.

That elegant yet complicated function made me see the watch in a whole new light. The stainless steel case was still a bit big for my taste, but I had less doubt that it was necessary for such a complicated watch and, as I dug into my third bratwurst in as many meals, maybe my wrist size would catch up to the 44mm case soon enough. Sure, I still lament the fact that the three-quarter plate movement still covers the system of levers and gears required to operate the watch. But after spending some time in the region getting educated on the watchmaking history and looking at the watch every so often, I came to appreciate the Glashütte stripes (not Geneva stripes) in a new light. Even the microrotor was charming, whirring away on my wrist with its forward and backward-facing double-G logo (looking to the future and the past). And decoding the operation of the watch itself allowed me to look at the dial, not with confusion but with an appreciation of Glashütte Original's ability to create such a complex dial with sunken subdials, apertures, and blue indices that match the blued hands wonderfully...and do it all in-house. 

As my time in Glashütte drew to a close, I felt somewhat bad, for more than the amount of bratwurst or schnitzel I consumed. Sure, I'm not currently in the market for a $21,500 watch, but the Senator Cosmopolite proved to me that I don't want to be five years late to something so interesting ever again.