Groma Kolibri

Now that I’ve decided to reactivate my blog, I might as well start sharing inconsequential life updates on it.

I recently started collecting typewriters - I didn’t really mean to, it just kind of happened, and now I own, like, eight.

I don’t care a lot about mint condition or anything like that, I want to actually experience what it was like to use them, and my favourite piece is also among the more scratched-up ones.

It’s a GDR-built Groma Kolibri, rebadged as a Neckersmann Brillant (sic.) Junior by a West German retailer. This brand name was used for a variety of rebadged import machines, with later models coming largely from Japan. The Kolibri is one of the flattest typewriters there are, its typing comfort is excellent, but it does tend to gather a lot of scrapes because the return lever will slam against the cover if you slightly misalign it after changing the ribbon.

To write on it feels amazing, though, far better than any other ultraportable I have tried so far, and the scuff marks mean I could slap a Hatsune Miku sticker on there without feeling guilty. It’s a machine that is meant to be used, not a museum piece, after all.

This type of machine also featured in “The Lives of the Others”, although the plot point about not being able to find a regular, black ribbon in the small size required is completely made up. This machine eats the same DIN ribbons that go into almost every post-WWII German-built typewriter.