München, the capital of Bavaria in southern Germany, is a popular destination for many people from all over the world. A famous beer town, every year people arrive in their thousands for the huge Octoberfest.

This is not the only interesting attraction in this nice city however, you can also visit many art galleries, museums and fantastic restaurants and shops. Here in München I can enjoy my favorite ball of limone ice cream for only €0.80.....in Firenze it costs €5.00.!
Apart from the lemon ice cream and some nice dinners, more importantly, I am here for a very interesting pen show.

This must be one of the smallest pen shows in the world, smaller even perhaps then the Firenze (Italy) Pen Show. A recent road trip to a pen show at Trieste, Italy, on the very northern coast of the Adriatic Sea was only 130 miles (208km). Up and down the mountains and valleys of Slovenia makes for many more miles and very hot brakes. This trip to München (Munich) is about 370 miles (590 km) and is a very beautiful drive. Northwest through the Julian Alps of Slovenia, across the beautiful countryside of Austria and the Bavarian Alps with some mountain peaks such as thet Hoher Dachstein soaring to 9800 feet (2995 m). If you drive through mountains like this, you find that it is just as difficult going downhill as uphill. You can enjoy the scenery when you are a passenger, but certainly not when you are driving! For a serious pen collector like me, it takes more than mountains to stop me from traveling to a good pen show!

The München Pen Show is hosted by the Prantl shop on Theatinerstrasse in the middle of downtown München. Mr. Ant. Prantl has been the owner for many years and features high quality modern pens as well as vintage pens, jewelry and fine leather goods.

Cartoon advertising “Der Fullhalter-Doktor kommt!”

The show was advertised well in advance with the banner explaining “ “Der Fullhalter-Doktor kommt !” The Fullhalter-Doktor is our friend Dr. Osman Sumer of Hamburg. Osman comes to many of the pen shows in the U.S. and is well known for his knowledge of Montblanc, Pelikan, his big smile and his solid grip handshake. Sometimes Osman also acts as a consultant to the Montblanc archives in Hamburg. The other pen Doktor is Dr. David Parisi, another pen expert, who specializes in vintage pencils.

Dr Osman Sumer (right)

But the show started two day's earlier! As with all previous years, our friend Dr Osman Sumer and David Parisi repair pens at the Prantl shop from 1300 to 1400 hours, with the show opening on Sunday 15 June from 10 to 1700 hours.

Saturday is an important day for all of us. We arrive a day early and spend Saturday evening at a very nice dinner, accompanied by some of the famous München beer, or maybe two or more !

This year at dinner we have Osman Sumer, David Parisi, Uli Kruner, Gerhard Brandl and myself. The whole evening centers around discussions about pens and more pens - we can't wait for Sunday and the start of the pen hunt.

On Friday and Saturday Osman and David are in the store to welcome customers and guests, and to encourage them to come in and have their pens assessed or repaired. If you are a vintage Montblanc or Pelikan collector, this is the place to come - you can imagine the excitement caused when a lady came in a few years ago with a solid gold Montblanc safety pen for repair advice!

On Sunday about ten tables were set up on the sidewalk and in a passage way along the side of the store. All of the dealers were from Germany, but since I come from Croatia, Osman said they would bill is as an “International” pen show in my honor.

Finally Sunday comes, and all of us are there at 9 AM...Mr Prantl arrives with a small truck and we start to prepare our tables and chairs, setting out our pens and items for sale. In just 10 minutes everything is ready, so now the show can start.

You can see from the photographs that the show takes place on the street, and many citizens of München come to see our pens - some with lots of questions to which we give our best answers – for us, this is a very enjoyable event. I also strike it lucky and manage to purchase a hard to find Penkala safety pen.

At 5 PM the show is over, we package all our things and we all go to the cafe for our “goodbye” drinks. Again we discuss the pens and the many things other that we found at the show. A decision is made to come again next year!

After this at 5,30 PM everybody is ready to make their way home...Gerhard to Regensburg, Osman, David and Uli to Hamburg and me to Zagreb.

Again a very nice but long drive home to Zagreb, but I have lots of nice music in my car, including an old Eagles CD. I listen to an old favorite song of mine; Desperado....

I arrive home around midnight, tired but very happy, with another nice pen trip behind me.

Photos by Miroslav Tischler

You can visit Miroslav Tischler at the Penkala web site