Made in Germany

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.

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.

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.

The prizes were really nice – a free spin gets you anything from pens and other stationery items to fridge magnets and the likes.

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.

You can certainly see where the ink tower got its name from, as it is the tallest (connected) building around.

After walking up the stairs you see the main area. Luxury pens in the front and school pens in the back.

To the left of this area there is a neighbouring room.

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.

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.

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.

Similar to what you see at Pen shows in the UK the pens on offer are mainly vintage pens.

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.

Another ‘revived’ brand at this Open Day was Goldfink Berlin, revived by Tom Westerich in the 2000s.

I was quite moved by the fact that Goldfink gave children free fountain pens. What a nice gesture.

We also got a tour of the (outside of the) buildings with an overview of Pelikan’s history. A great experience.

Pelikan also sells some of their luxury pens at a discount there. I was very tempted by the Orange Delight version of the M200.

You also have the chance to try out the different nibs, so I asked to try out the F and EF version.

In my experience different batches can write very different, even for the steel nib, with some steel F nibs being very flexible for example.

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.