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Travels with pens: Austria

I spent the past week in Austria, surrounded by mountains, forests and lakes.

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Everywhere you look is a sight like this. 

It was a proper family holiday, but that didn’t mean I left my pens behind. As usual before a trip, I spent more time planning which pens to take than anything else. These five made the cut.

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Five beauties accompanied me. Fun fact: I stood next to Kate Moss in the security queue. These were better looking.

Left to right:

  • Pelikan M400 white tortoise, Montblanc Swan Illusion
  • Visconti London Fog, Edelstein Topaz
  • Pelikan M805 Ocean Swirl, Iroshizuku Tsuki-Yo
  • Pilot 823, Montblanc Lavender Purple
  • Montblanc 1912, Montblanc Red Fox

The heavy Germanic influence was deliberate!

You may note that these are all expensive, all gold-nibbed, and most are fairly new to me. Perhaps therefore not the greatest choice for travel, but I looked after them well in a Nock Sinclair, and kept them in the hotel safe when I wasn’t carrying them, and all was fine. And since there were quite a few days of heavy walking under changeable Austrian skies, my pens certainly weren’t constant companions.

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Austria is a stunner. Pens took a back seat.

Unusually for me, I also took my full-size A5 Hobonichi with me for journalling, as well as a Tomoe California pocket notebook for day plans. It was a cathartic part of the daily routine to sit at the hotel room’s desk and dump the day’s events on to the page after another cheese-heavy Austrian dinner.

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Cheese and figs. Five courses every night. 

My partner took her Prera and A6 Hobo, and my daughter took her unicorn-snot Birmingham Model A, Kaweco Perkeo and Lamy Nexx. Only the Prera leaked on the plane, because it was the only pen not stored upright.

I even managed to sneak in a little bit of pen shopping on a daytrip to Innsbruck. What’s this lurking next to the huge arch?

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Ernst Schmid is a lovely large stationers with a pretty big fine pen department. Lots of Montblancs (both standard and LEs), Pelikans, Caran d’Aches, Grafs, Kawecos and Lamys, including a demo Dialog and a demo Imporium. Unfortunately, everything was at the sky-high Euro list price so I wasn’t tempted to buy anything.

So that’s why the blog’s been quiet for a while. I hope you’ll forgive me.

 

5 Comments

  1. Carly | FearlessFemaleTravels.com

    Your photos are great! It’s hard to decide what’s more beautiful – the natural surroundings or the classical architecture in the city!

  2. rupertarzeian

    It looks beautiful there and the pen shop looks interesting too. Glad you brought some London Fog to Austria.

  3. NW

    Lovely stuff. Out of interest where did you get that 823?

    • Anthony

      From Pen House on Rakuten. Customs took ages and I ended up with a £50 charge on it. I never learn…

  4. Kamil Klapka

    Looking forward to your impressions of Pilot 823

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