Kraków

Main Market Square, Kraków

Kraków is one of the oldest cities in Poland and from 1038-1596 was the capital. The scene shows the carriages waiting in the Market Square for passengers, it is a popular tourist destination.  The centre of Kraków has been designated a world heritage site by UNESCO. The beautiful renaissance building on the postcard is the Cloth Hall (Sukiennice) which is, and was, a centre of trade. Nowadays apart from shops it also houses galleries of 19th century Polish art.  On the left is St Mary's Basilica, a brick built Gothic church rebuilt in the 14th Century. Every hour a trumpet signal is played from the taller tower. This commemorates the 13th Century trumpeter shot in the throat while sounding an alarm before the Mongol Golden Horde attacked the city. The midday trumpet is played on Polish radio every day.

My sender, Mateusz, ambition is to study at the university of Science and Technology here, he was visiting Kraków when he bought this card, and is studying hard.  The university is a nice link to the card's stamp

 Graphic Designer:- Anna Niemierko

one of the 2010 'Minerals' set. What a beautiful colour. This is chrysoprase, a word from the Greek, chrysos (gold) and prasinos (greenish).  The largest deposit of this mineral in Europe is in Lower Silesia, Poland, it is also possibly the largest amount in the world. The green in chrysoprase varies from apple to dark green depending on the amount of nickel in the rock. I think it would make very pretty jewellery.

Thank you Mateusz, good luck with the exams.

Field Birds

Spot the bird. The names may be unfamiliar, but maybe handy to know when meeting a Dutch birder. My sender, Marjo, says I will see most of the Dutch field birds on this postcard.  As she says, they are familiar sights in England too. So interesting to see the Dutch for swallow is zwaluw and buzzard, buizerd. Our countries have more in common than just birds.  I heard a curlew calling this week on the marshes, one of my favourite sounds, or maybe I should have called it a wulp. Next time I walk through the park I will see the coot nesting, and perhaps call them meerkoet.

The card came with an interesting set of stamps

left to right, 1) Juliana Regina, 2) a 1987 Red Cross stamp with wonderful graphics, designed by Max Kisma, famous for his font designs. This  (one of three) is the result of hundreds of designs and collage images which he manually drew, cut and pasted then digitised on a computer.  3) Lastly one of the 1988 set celebrating the art of the avant-garde CoBrA group founded in 1948. So named after the cities they lived and worked in, Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam.  This is a stamp of the signature of Constant with a symbol of the Cobra group. The stamp that completes it is

Constant's painting of 1950 'Fallen Horse'. For the story of  CoBrA in stamps, yes isn't the internet wonderful, see here   

Thank you Marjo, great card.

Cruising on the Kiel Canal

Cruise ships on the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal, or the Kiel Canal, 61 miles that connects the North Sea to the Baltic Sea, cutting out the journey round the Jutland peninsula.  It is said to be the busiest artificial waterway in the world.  In 2010 there were an average of 87 ships a day (a number which excludes small and pleasure boats),  using this route. Because of the numbers there are special traffic rules for large ships using the canal, however most large cruise ships cannot pass under the bridges so cannot use it. As can be seen the ones on this card are small enough, although there does not seem to be a lot of room to spare on the main picture of the Holland-America Line ship Prinsendam.  The ship top left, the MS Norwegian Dream, has special funnels and masts that can be lowered for passage.  The stacked decks of the large modern cruise liner are not very attractive but the smaller ones like Arielle and Astor here have more classic and graceful lines. 

My sender likes to travel and is looking forward to June when she will go on a cruise, not through the Kiel Canal, but to Iceland and Svalbard seeing some amazing landscapes.  The card came with

one of the pretty flower definitives and the 2010 stamp commemorating 20 years of German unification with the crowds waving flags in front of what I think may be the German parliament.  Every year since the fall of the Berlin wall and the unification of west and east Germany the 3rd October is a national holiday and a specific place is designated for the main celebration. This year it will be Bonn.

Thank you Lulo, happy cruising.    

Sailing

 Sailing Dinghies

We are having glorious weather at the moment, the perfect time to mess around in boats. I think these two stamps portray the colour and speed of sailing beautifully. Whether out for the day on the lakes and seas or

 Racing Keel Yachts

the more serious business of trying to win a race.

An entry to Sunday Stamps hosted by Viridiasn Postcards

Waiting

A faithful friend looking down the line for a train to arrive. When I picked this up from my letterbox I just went, aww.  Of course this photograph features the bête noir of steam train photographers, overhead electric lines. But as there is not a train in sight they nicely add distance.  I can imagine standing on this station, the wooden boards warm in the sunshine and the train speeding down the line. 

I'm trying to ignore the damage caused by the mail system to the bottom corner, have they acquired a giant rubber recently, this is the second postcard I have received with a mark of this kind.

My sender, Sonja, is a baker-confectioner, two of my favourite things. I love going to countries and tasting the different cakes, pastries and bread. Perhaps in Finland I'll start with omena piirakka (apple pie) or this weekend, mämmi, a Finnish Easter speciality consisting of rye-malt, rye-meal, treacle, and orange peel; eaten with cream and sugar.  I can't imagine what that tastes like.

The card came with one of the 2009 Aurora borealis stamps which

with this one I now have two of the three stamp set.  

Thank you Sonja for this cute card.       

The Family

A painting called "The Family" by Sergei Ivanov. Where are they going in the snow?  The young girl in blue with an angelic face leading the procession.  Wherever it is they are well wrapped up against the cold.  My sender, Kati, tells me they are a 19th Century family.  I have been unable to find a lot of information on the artist apart from his lifespan 1864-1910 and that his main subjects were the history of Russia, peasant life and the Russian Revolution of 1905. He was a member of a group of artists called the peredvizhniki, (the wanderers) who were realist painters portraying the life of Russians at that time, both the harshness and the beauty. "The Family" can be seen in The Russian Museum, St Petersburg , a place no doubt to find out more about the painting and Sergei Ivanov.  The postcard came with two

of the 2008 Belarus definitives of Garden Flowers. These the peony and the lily.

Thank you Kati for this beautiful postcard.

Resurrection

 

"Resurrection"

I didn't think I would have anything for this weeks Sunday Stamps on the theme of Easter or religion so I went off to find something symbolic like rabbits or eggs, but after a root through an old box of stamps discovered this stamp, issued by Burundi in Easter 1969.  The other bonus was I discovered an artist I had never heard of, Antoine Caron (1521-1599), not many of this French artist's works survive. He was a painter at the French court and the description of this says so much in a single sentence -

"his work reflects the refined, though highly unstable atmosphere at the court of the House of Valois during the French Wars of Religion 1560-1598".  

As can be seen Caron elongated his figures, I wonder if that was the reason he was chosen, for one of the other stamps in the set  is of an El Greco painting. Of course once I'd seen the detail of a floating and dancing Christ I had to see if I could find the context of the Caron painting which changes the view of the image entirely.

The painting can be seen in the Musée départmental de l'Oise in Beauvais, located in the centre of the city by the cathedral, it looks a fascinating place. 

Sunday Stamps is hosted by Viridians Postcards here