A productive evening
My Adler Contessa de Luxe now works! It has a lovely font. I cleaned it, changed (respooled) the ribbon, and made a few little adjustments. It still has two problems: one of the sticky keys is still sticky (the others aren't anymore), and the bell doesn't work most of the time. But I'm happy, it's the first machine I actually repaired.
My very first printer, lent to me by a friend, was a dot printer. I both hated it (for the stupid amont of noise it was making and the (lack of) printing quality) and loved it (because it was so cool, and it was my first printer). I printed an entire book draft using that and probably started losing some hearing at the same time too :p