Hey guys! 😀 You probably heard about the Pelikan Hub that gets organized each year (in 2018 we had the 5th Pelikan Hub). If you haven’t then have a look at this link and read up on it from Pelikan themselves. The tl;dr is that it’s a gathering of pen enthusiasts sponsored and coordinated (to a point) by Pelikan. I moved this year to Budapest so it was a no-brainer for me and my girlfriend to attend this year’s Pelikan hub.
It was an awesome experience and it was completely what I expected and how I imagined it would be like. The only problem was that it felt so short, time flew by and I swear I could have stayed with everyone for a couple of more hours discussing pens and inks. I’ll just do a quick summary of what happened and at the end you can find the gallery with some awesome photos. The truth is I was so preoccupied with all the new pens, inks, people and the experience in general that I completely forgot to take photos! So the photos in the post are provided by Daniel Berecz, the hubmaster for this year, Gábor Mészáros and Kym Bat, attendees at the hub.
Before we start I’d like to express my gratitude towards Daniel for hosting this year’s Pelikan Hub!
We started out by going to a beautiful stationary shop called Bomo-Art. They have two shops open in Budapest and we visited the one located on the Buda side. Bomo Art mainly carries their in-house, handmade notebooks, calendars and other stationary items, but they also focus on brands that are not predominantly known or carried by other vendors in Hungary. These include J. Herbin, Kaweco, KWZ, Robert Oster and Kyo no Oto inks.
During our visit the owner of Bomo Art talked about the history of the company, his experience with fountain pens and inks and was kind enough to also listen to our suggestions or rather wishes on what products should they focus on for fountain pen enthusiasts. At the end they even prepared a farewell gift package for us that included a Bomo Art calendar and notepad. Thank you very much Bomo Art! ❤ If you guys are ever in Budapest and have time, I can definitely recommend that you check out one of their stores!
After this we went over the Pest side to Magvető Café where the big fun started. Daniel already had tables reserved for the event so everybody quickly sat down and we started unpacking our pens and inks. 😁 We promptly got stopped because Pelikan prepared for us a presentation about the hub, an awesome flag which we all have signed and a packet of goodies, that included a bottle of Edelstein Olivine ink for everybody who has registered for the hub. Our hub master was also kind enough to prepare for us a neat little package with different kinds of paper that we could try out!
After this it was time to start the fun! I don’t think we had two pens that were the same at this gathering so literally every pen you could check out was unique. We had Pelikans, Graf von Faber-Castells, Sailors, Lamys, vintage pens, modern pens. You name it, we had it! The whole event was quite energetic and fast paced, I didn’t know where to look, who to talk to because I wanted to look everywhere and talk with everybody! 😂🤷♂️
It was nice to meet new people who are also into fountain pens and I dare say some of them are more into it than me which makes me feel not so bad when I’m drooling over my next new pen or new ink. (seriously I have enough ink for a lifetime)
What’s also awesome about Budapest is that the guys from the hub are also organizing monthly gatherings so I can attend those as well and finally talk about pens in real life with others! I can’t wait to get to the October pen meet.
If you haven’t been to a Pelikan hub I can recommend it with all my heart! It was an awesome event with awesome people and many, many pens and inks! I won’t hold you up longer though, here’s the gallery with the photos the others made (thanks again guys for letting me post them!).