The Pelikan Hubs for 2024 took place last weekend and luckily I was chosen again as the Pelikan Hub host for Bremen. This year we met in a more central location: in a very nice and vegan Restaurant serving Chinese / Taiwanese food.
Compared to last year it was really busy: Altogether twelve fountain pen fans attended, including Michael Silbermann, the author of the bilingual book in German and English on Pelikan’s special and limited edition’s between 1993 and 2020. He and his wife also brought a few of their special and limited editions with them. It was great to try them out. Other participants also brought lots of pens and I was able to try out pens I didn’t even know existed before this evening.
Once a year, not long before their worldwide Hubs, Pelikan organises an Open Day at their ink tower (TintenTurm) in Hannover’s Pelikan quarter. Seeing that I now live in driving distance, we (i.e. the whole family) went there last Saturday to have a look.
Lots of construction sites around
When parking the car nearby the venue you can see a lot of construction sites where residential buildings are being built. A nice surprise was that the street names all seemed to have a Pelikan link.
A Pelikan related street name
Before even entering the ink tower the event already starts just outside the tower, with activity tables and a prize wheel set up for kids.
Activities for kids
The prizes were really nice – a free spin gets you anything from pens and other stationery items to fridge magnets and the likes.
Prizes
I was especially impressed by the Pelikan erasers I saw there that have a slot on the top, so that they can be used as pen holders. Unfortunately I haven’t seen these in shops yet.
An eraser with a pen holder (green) – great idea!
You can certainly see where the ink tower got its name from, as it is the tallest (connected) building around.
Downstairs entrance area
After walking up the stairs you see the main area. Luxury pens in the front and school pens in the back.
Landing area updstairs
To the left of this area there is a neighbouring room.
Exhibition
On the day, it housed an exhibition of drawings submitted for a contest on one end and a table where you can try out different Edelstein inks by writing your own postcards.
Postcard station
Cards and stamps were provided. There was also a member of staff on this table who was engraving Toledo pens, or, more precisely, the barrels of Toledo pens.
Toledo engraving
The main part of this room, between the exhibition and the post card table was taken up by a pen-show-like set up with sellers, selling their goods on tables.
Toledo!
Similar to what you see at Pen shows in the UK the pens on offer are mainly vintage pens.
Kaweco’s Michael Gutberlet
This being Pelikan’s Open Day I was quite surprised to see Michael Gutberlet there, the man who single-handedly revived Kaweco in the 1990s.
Goldfink Berlin’s Tom Westerich
Another ‘revived’ brand at this Open Day was Goldfink Berlin, revived by Tom Westerich in the 2000s.
Goldfink Berlin
I was quite moved by the fact that Goldfink gave children free fountain pens. What a nice gesture.
Goldfink Berlin
We also got a tour of the (outside of the) buildings with an overview of Pelikan’s history. A great experience.
Historic Tour
Pelikan also sells some of their luxury pens at a discount there. I was very tempted by the Orange Delight version of the M200.
Historic Tour Pelikan coat of arms
You also have the chance to try out the different nibs, so I asked to try out the F and EF version.
Trying the pen out there and then only produced meh results, with the line being far too wide. We bought the pen anyway because it looks so nice.
When trying it out after I returned home I was very surprised: the pen wrote much better, producing thin crisp lines, just how I like them.
I am not sure what happened, either their ink wasn’t right or their paper, maybe because it had been stored in a humid environment at some stage, who knows. In Hannover the paper sucked the ink in so lines were wide, nearly like blotting paper.
So I now have an Orange Delight M200 that writes amazingly, I have one critique about the new paper-covered boxes though. The employee must have had inky hands when packing the pen – and it is impossible to remove the ink without damaging the slightly rough paper on the box.
We had a great time. If you ever have a chance to visit the ink tower please do so. They are open throughout the year, but historic tours only take place on certain dates. I assume that the special activities, like postcard writing, pen sellers etc also do not occur very often, so it might be worth checking first.
By now, the new school year has started in most countries, and this year, I saw something I hadn’t seen before: Here in Northern Germany, in the states of Bremen and Lower Saxony, I have noticed houses decorated with large pencils. This is not very common, I only spotted a handful of houses like this, and seems to indicate that a child living in the house is starting primary school.
One of the houses with pencil decorations also had a Danish flag, so I wonder if this is a Danish tradition that has spread to Northern Germany.I have never observed this in England or Southern Germany.
After being able to observe the shift from the traditional, wood-cased Noris to the new upcycled wood Noris in the UK last year (see The new, upcycled Noris) I was able to experience the same transition in Germany now.
What I saw is, of course, only a small snapshot of the two countries as I observed the transition in a city in North West England last year and now in a city in North West Germany. Other parts of the two countries might have experienced the change at different times.
In March 2024, about a year after the switch in the UK, supermarkets here still had the wood-cased version. Here is an example from Kaufland in Ritterhude.
The wood-cased Noris
By now, only the upcycled Noris is available. I assume the old ones sold out and stock just got replaced with the new version. I am not able to find the wood-cased Noris in any other supermarket in and around Bremen anymore, but some pockets with old stock might still be available, especially in shops with low turnover.
I used to order my Techos from the Hobonichi store in Japan, but now that I live in Germany and only need the notebook itself, it turned out much cheaper to order it from PenStore.nl. Of course you don’t get the gimmicks that come with the Techo: a 3-colour uni Jetstream pen and this year also a little bag, but postage from Japan would have been about as much as the Techo itself.
It’s nice to be able to easily order from continental Europe again. Since Brexit I missed out on a few nice stationery items that were either too expensive to get into the UK or were not available in the UK.
I wonder what other stores I’ll discover that I missed out on so far. Unfortunately it’s now more expensive to order from nice UK shops like The Pen Company, Pen Heaven, Write Here and CultPens. Some of them pay duties and taxes for you, for others you have to pay via the delivery company, so you don’t know in advance how much it will cost…
