Shiny New Toy...

[chemguyethan]

Greetings all.

 

This is a preemptive post in lieu of my pen which should be in the mail tomorrow, but I'm so excited I have to post now before I get it!

 

Managed to snag a blue striped M800 with the 3B nib! Got a great deal! I randomly threw a bid down on ebay and ended up winning the pen, no one else even bid on it!

 

I'm learning I'm a sucker for big, juicy nibs and I've longed for a Pelikan broad for a while now, who knew my first would be the triple broad?!

 

I'll post some pics and my initial impressions when I get it hopefully later this week (c'mon snail mail!).

Edited November 10, 2015 by chemguyethan

[Misfit]

It's nice to avoid bidders. I'll check back for photos.

[jkingrph]

Yeah I understand. I have a Mont Blanc 146 Solitaire Doue in the mail. The seller listed it as a buy it now, and I later got a email from him congragulating me on the purchase, and saying he had meant for the buy it now price to be a starting bid, which at the price would have been appropriate for that pen.

[DnzUlc]

Wow, you guys are very lucky, you really should play lottery😃 They are great pens indeed but it is even better when you get things with stories like that. Waiting for pictures impatiently😃

Edited November 10, 2015 by DnzUlc

[jkingrph]

Best part is that I found a matching ballpoint and have it coming also.

 

I originally found, bid and won on what was to be this fountain pen from a vendor in Turkey, who had it described as a Le Grand and a piston filler, but it turned out to be a 144. I managed to contact him before shipment and he cancelled the order and gave me a quick refund

 

DncUlc, I see you are in Ankara, I spent two years in Izimir back in the early 1970's

[chemguyethan]

Ah, nice snag on the MB 146! I'd like to add one of those to my collection at some point too, that or a 149... I've got big hands so a pen to match would be nice, haha.

 

I don't consider myself that lucky of a person in most respects, but every now and then I get surprised. Pen shipped today and should be here Thursday!

[DnzUlc]

Best part is that I found a matching ballpoint and have it coming also.

 

I originally found, bid and won on what was to be this fountain pen from a vendor in Turkey, who had it described as a Le Grand and a piston filler, but it turned out to be a 144. I managed to contact him before shipment and he cancelled the order and gave me a quick refund

 

DncUlc, I see you are in Ankara, I spent two years in Izimir back in the early 1970's

What a coincidence, Izmir is my hometown, i came to Ankara for my university preferences😃

Two years is quite a time, i hope you enjoyed your stay in Izmir, for me it is still the best city in Turkey but i can't be expected to be completely objective about this matter😃

[flipper_gv]

A store close by has a couple m800 BBB left and I'm hesitating a lot about getting it. Convince me!

[Bo Bo Olson]

That is going to be a very WIDE nib....my modern 605 BB is much wider than my vintage OBB's. So wide I seldom used it.

[jmccarty3]

A store close by has a couple m800 BBB left and I'm hesitating a lot about getting it. Convince me!

 

 

Buy the pen! If you don't like it, you can have a nibmeister redo it to a fantastic stub or oblique, or you can sell the BBB nib for a good price. These nibs are getting harder and harder to find.

[jkingrph]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a coincidence, Izmir is my hometown, i came to Ankara for my university preferences
Two years is quite a time, i hope you enjoyed your stay in Izmir, for me it is still the best city in Turkey but i can't be expected to be completely objective about this matter

 

 

​I really enjoyed Izmir. I was a newlywed USAF officer and got to bring my wife along. We visited a lot of the historical ruins around the area, got a tent and camped out on some of the remote beaches for the weekends, I would go wild boar hunting back in the mountains.

 

We lived in a new apartment bulding about two blocks off Attaturk Circle, overlooking the back gardens and swimming pool of the Efes hotel, and a couple of blocks from the Culture Park. We visited Pammuakle several times and took a long road trip to the Gorme valley one summer. We were there for the short war between Turkey and Greece over Cyprus. It was an interesting time for us.

[DnzUlc]

​I really enjoyed Izmir. I was a newlywed USAF officer and got to bring my wife along. We visited a lot of the historical ruins around the area, got a tent and camped out on some of the remote beaches for the weekends, I would go wild boar hunting back in the mountains.

 

We lived in a new apartment bulding about two blocks off Attaturk Circle, overlooking the back gardens and swimming pool of the Efes hotel, and a couple of blocks from the Culture Park. We visited Pammuakle several times and took a long road trip to the Gorme valley one summer. We were there for the short war between Turkey and Greece over Cyprus. It was an interesting time for us.

Wow what a tremendous adventure and experience, i can easily say you did all there is about Izmir pretty much in two years but to tell you the truth, i think back in those years the city was more beatiful compared to it's current state, except for the war of course, but considering we added new ones nowadays, it won't make any difference i guess. The place where you lived, all those places you visited and the way you told them are beatiful and made me miss my hometown, i want to relive all the experiences about Izmir now, starting with drinking a cold beer or rakı under the sunset near sea, but that is currently impossible for me since i am in Italy for Erasmus. When i return and visit Izmir, if you would like too, i would really like to take some pictures of the places you visited back then and send them to you. Thank you so much for sharing a marvelous adventure in the city i love.

[sargetalon]

Greetings all.

 

This is a preemptive post in lieu of my pen which should be in the mail tomorrow, but I'm so excited I have to post now before I get it!

 

Managed to snag a blue striped M800 with the 3B nib! Got a great deal! I randomly threw a bid down on ebay and ended up winning the pen, no one else even bid on it!

 

I'm learning I'm a sucker for big, juicy nibs and I've longed for a Pelikan broad for a while now, who knew my first would be the triple broad?!

 

I'll post some pics and my initial impressions when I get it hopefully later this week (c'mon snail mail!).

Congrats on the M800. I'm a big fan of the blue striped barrels. That nib is not easily found these days so that's a bonus. Enjoy it!

[jkingrph]

Thanks DuzUlc I would love to see some current pictures of Izmir. Even better would be to enjoy them with a cold Efes Pilsen beer. If I remember, the manager the brewery lived in our apt. building. Raki I cold not develop a taste for, but some of the wines were fantastic. One of the little portable resturants on a 3 wheel motor scooter type thing would set up outside our little hospital daily and the man running it made the best sandwiches.

[DnzUlc]

Thanks DuzUlc I would love to see some current pictures of Izmir. Even better would be to enjoy them with a cold Efes Pilsen beer. If I remember, the manager the brewery lived in our apt. building. Raki I cold not develop a taste for, but some of the wines were fantastic. One of the little portable resturants on a 3 wheel motor scooter type thing would set up outside our little hospital daily and the man running it made the best sandwiches.

You really remember a lot, those portable restaurants still continue, they are a part of the food tradition, some of them serving since early 20th century, and i agree completely, most of them are very delicious, by the way Efes Pilsen is my favorite beer It is really nice to see how you liked and remembered a part of the culture of this city all those years. Thanks for sharing your memories, aside from photos, if there is anything you missed about Izmir which i can help please let me know.

[jkingrph]

You really remember a lot, those portable restaurants still continue, they are a part of the food tradition, some of them serving since early 20th century, and i agree completely, most of them are very delicious, by the way Efes Pilsen is my favorite beer It is really nice to see how you liked and remembered a part of the culture of this city all those years. Thanks for sharing your memories, aside from photos, if there is anything you missed about Izmir which i can help please let me know​

 

 

All this has had me thinking. My wife and I would often walk to our US commissary (grocery store) as parking was a problem there. After buying groceries we would most often get a horse drawn carriage to carry our purchases back to the apartment. We were also on good terms with a gentleman who had a little open air green grocery on the ground floor of our building, where we bought most of our fresh fruits and vegetables, plus there was a small grocer or convenience store around the corner where we would buy that wonderful bread, ek mek I think it was called, I probably spelled it wrong.

 

Then there was the occasional gypsy with his dancing bear, and during the times when we first arrived and getting ready to leave, staying in the officers club hotel, the Kordon, and watching all the ships in the harbor.

 

We knew some people who did not like it, but we kept an open mind and enjoyed the culture and tried to learn some of the language although it was difficult, as most of the Turkish people we associated with said it would help them more if we spoke English because we would return to the US where Turkish was not spoken, and they were correct. We helped along with other Americans in our building to get the young son of the apartment manager to speaking excellent English during the time we were there.

One of the things I liked was hat we could go to some of the costal beaches and camp, and how cold the water was in the Agean even in the summer, or drive around the bay past Karshiaka(spelling 45 years after the fact is probably incorrect) and go up into the mountains to spend a cool summer afternoon looking out over the city.

[DnzUlc]

I am glad that you were happy with being in Izmir and lived the culture to the fullest, i think it is a better way compared to isolation from the outside world and i'm amazed at how little has change since then, the things that you mention are still continuing except the gypsies with bears and the horse carriages are just touristic now and very rarely seen, by the way it is incredible that you remember Turkish words after all those years like ekmek, Kordon or Karşıyaka you have a very good memory. I left Izmir six years ago and sometimes i have difficulty remembering some places in Izmir😃

[jkingrph]

DnzUlc you must be quite the scholar to be involved with the Erasmus program. I hope you are enjoying it and learning a lot. I often wish that I had gone back to school for an advance degree.

 

I think of our time over there as an excellent education, especially in some of the ancient history and early Christian history, as we were in the epicenter of the " Seven Churches of Asia Minor". We did manage to visit Greece and made a trip down to Israel while there, but the best was the week we spent touring the central part of the country to Cappedocia.

 

I had to make an official trip down to Incirlik air force base at Adana, and had a couple of free days before our flight back, so we got out and saw a little of the country down there. It was a different world from Izmir. My mother in law and a friend came over for a visit, so I got an afternoon off and flew up to Istanbul to meet them and ease their way into the country, After a couple of weeks in Izmir my wife and I flew back to Istanbul with them for a long weekend and toured the sights of Istanbul and enjoyed every minute of it.

 

Back in September of 72 when we arrived in Istanbul the airport was totally closed so they could have some ceremonial affair for the then Shah of Iran, so we were told, and our flight to Izmir was cancelled. There were enough people needing to go there that THY arranged an unscheduled flight late that night so we got to Izmir around 1am. The terminal was actually closed, but some young lady attendant had been notified that the flight was coming and met the plane. The people who were to meet us had gone home many hours earlier and did not know what had happened, so this young lady managed to get through to someone in our security service. When he got there he said the phone connection was so bad that all they heard was airport, so they sent a driver out to see what was happening. That's how we managed to get to our hotel that night, or rather morning, without any luggage though. It was quite an experience.

[DnzUlc]

😃😃 Things like that can still happen in Turkey, altough i believe we are more systematic now compared to those years, i can see you really enjoyed the culture and sightseeing to the fullest, and i am happy to see such a positive opinion from outside about my country, it is a bit rare😃

Edited November 14, 2015 by DnzUlc

[jkingrph]

I would honestly like to make a trip back to Izmir to see how it has changed in the 41 years since we left there, but with all the problems in Europe and the Mideast I am very hesitant to do so, plus at our ages do not care to make such a long flight.

 

I met a physician who had worked in our little hospital some 20 years before I was stationed there, so that would have been sometime in the mid 1950's and he was amazed at how the city had changed, saying that he saw numerous camel caravans on a weekly basis. I only saw one or two in the two years I was there, and suspect that they are a thing of the past, at least in the city.

 

I just hope Turkey can continue on it's conservative/moderate path and remain a stabilizing force in that region, but know that will be a problem with what is going on on the southern border.

 

Good luck my friend to you and your lovely country.