Fountain Pen Review: Eine Andere Deutsche Füller

"Another German Fountain Pen"

Well here we go again.  I thought I would throw out this brief review of another German fountain pen for two reasons.  One is for completeness; I want to review all of the fountain pens I have just to share my opinion.  The other is to prove a point to myself: that I shall get a lot more hits on the blog by people looking for fountain pens.

This second reason was confirmed by the 'Sitemeter' widget I have on the blog.  After I published my review of the Pelikan fountain pen, the number of visits to the page went through the roof.  For me, 'through the roof' means more than 40 visits per day. 

Perhaps, someone could help me with the title of this blog post.  Füller is feminine, so I would expect the article Eine - with the 'e' on the end - to indicate that.  But then what does one do with each adjective to describe the subject?  In this case, I figured I would tag an 'e' onto each adjective as well.  I would like to improve my German, especially because several of the Noisykids have expressed an interest in learning it.

Today's pen comes to us from Rotring.

 Rotring literally means 'red ring,' which is immediately apparent as you look at the pen below.  For reasons that are beyond my comprehension, Rotring apparently does not ship to the United States anymore.  It is probably President George W. Bush's fault.  Regardless, this has really cranked up the price for these pens on sites such as eBay.  They are worth it, though.  They are solid pens that have a nice heft to them, and they write nicely.  I am using 'they' correctly here, because along with the fountain pen, I have a geek pen and a ballpoint pen made by Rotring, and they all are a pleasure to use.  A geek pen is one of those pens with multiple ink colors, pencil, and a PDA stylus.  Nowadays I just use the ink sections in the geek pen, and I haven't seen the ballpoint pen in a long time.  I suspect it is gone for good.

Back to the fountain pen.  It has the characteristic red ring, and a hexagonal-shaped body.  The cap fits well on the pen, but I have had to adjust it in the past to make it tighter.  One day I dropped it, and the cap refused to stay on for a while afterward.  My pen has a medium nib, and uses a convertor to slurp up ink.  I don't recall if there were any cartridges for this pen, but I don't care any more. 

The grip area is smooth and rounded, and feels really nice when signing legal documents or non-triplicate medical records.  Some of the inks I have used in it tend to make it spotty, and require me to swing the pen around like a maniac to get it to write sometimes.  I have found the Parker 'Quink' ink works best with this pen and allows me to maintain some dignity at the workplace.

Problems with this pen, as I mentioned before, are that the cap can slip off occasionally.  For an anesthesiologist, it doesn't matter if my scrubs get a big blotch of ink on them.  Heck, most scrub pants are used as a notepad in a pinch, so ink stains are no big deal.  If you have to wear a nice shirt or jacket all day, though, you may want to keep this in mind.

I am sure the folks at the Fountain Pen Hospital could fix the cap better than I could.

The other problems is the pen is kind of an orphan here in the States, so spare parts and repairs may be pricey.  On the other hand, one might recoup the price of the pen if you sold it to a collector some day.

While not my favorite pen, the Rotring fountain pen is a great pen with a great feel and smooth writing with my favorite ink.