Last Friday I visited the Pelikan Hub 2016 in Munich.

I don’t know if you heard what it is, but I’ll tell you anyways, just to make sure. Every year for a few years now, the company Pelikan helps organize these Pelikan Hubs all over the world. It’s a marketing tool for them, and an opportunity for their customers to meet and share all over the world. They organize it via their homepage, and select a so-called Hubmaster in every city, with whom they coordinate the gifts and materials, and who organizes the meeting in the respective city for as many people as registered via the platform.

As participant you get gifts, of course. It’s really cute 🙂

This year we got some paper (that’s a pad in the background) – though I’m not quite certain it’s all that fountain pen friendly…. The pen sleeve on the left you can slide onto a notebook – not sure if it is leather or imitated leather, but it’s nice, and the ink of the year! A bottle of Pelikan Edelstein Aquamarine. (the pen is mine, though. But it looked like it wanted in there.)

Very nice gifts, and it made me feel appreciated. I’m easily impressed like that 😉

We were ten people in Munich and met in an arabian restaurant, which had a very pleasant athmosphere, though I’m not much for the food sadly. That’s a personal flaw of mine and not of the place itself. Our Hub-Master, Angi, did a wonderful job with the preparation and setup, and brought along a lot of great ink samples as well. And a glass pen to try them, though I have to admit I still haven’t found out how it works. It didn’t for me. Glass pens and me are no friends. Ah well… 🙂

There’s a lot of talking and showing off pens and paper and discussing inks with ten people around the table, I tell you. And it was a really nice evening with all those pen enthusiasts, where I was able to try out and feel a few pens and materials I always wanted to experience first-hand. When the food arrived it became a little chaotic to get it all packed away until afterwards. 😉

All in all I enjoyed myself, met some very nice people and got some gifts from them as well – a few ink samples of wonderful ink I can’t wait to try out, and some cartridges others didn’t need anymore but I really look forward to try – if I find a cartridge pen. 😉 I’m sure I got the one or other in my collection. Angi even brought an Urushi pen – a wonderful piece of art that wrote like a dream.

The pictures are my fault, I’m still no better at taking them than I was a while ago. I really have to learn to take better pictures. 🙂 I’ll ask my best friend to help me out.

In retrospect I’d have loved to take a few more of the great pens the other participants took along, but I was a little overwhelmed at that time, I have to admit.

The Pelikan Hubs are a great idea and I hope Pelikan will continue to do them. This was my first one, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Thank you, Pelikan, for the great idea and for the wonderful gifts. I will enjoy them a lot. And I really am looking forward to next year’s Hub, especially since I’m really curious about next year’s color. 🙂

Here’s a little special picture I was allowed to take, a close-up of above’s pen wrap:

A beautiful collection, and I have to admit I didn’t write down half as many names as I should have. The blue-white one, a Visconti Opera, writes like a dream, by the way.

I enjoyed myself and I hope you’ll enjoy the pictures. I didn’t know there were so many pen enthusiasts in my area, and that at least was a really pleasant surprise. Though I shouldn’t do it too often – I have too many pens as it is. 😉

So that was it. Did you go to a Hub somewhere? I’ll certainly be looking at some other blogs and videos from different regions. I like the idea.