Germany: Covid-19 in Braunschweig

One Friday I got four postcards: two from Germany, one from Australia and one from China.

The two cards from Germany show two of three posters created by my home town as part of a campaign on Covid-19. I was very surprised to see that the motives of the posters were also printed as postcards. Unfortunately I was so far not able to get the third card.

The first card is about face masks. 

The main reason why I sent these two postcards to myself is the postmark. Like Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom earlier Germany introduced on 1st July advertising postmarks with the message "Together against Corona, Protect yourself and others". This postmark will be used in 73 mail sorting centres for a not yet limited period of time, so actually most mail coming from Germany in the next months will get this postmark. For my collection however I sent these two cards and some for other collectors directly to the regional mail sorting centre to get it. It was the first time that I asked for a postmark that way. The result is surprisingly good. For postage I used the usual definitive about the Cornflower (issued 01-07-2019).

The second card is about hand washing. The remaining third card deals with social distancing. Hopefully I can show it here in the future.

I used the same stamp and postmark on this card.

cover from Germany

On Friday I got not only four postcards but also a cover from Germany.

Stamp:

Nasturtium (issued 01-07-2019)

with a special postmark about the 75th anniversary of the Free Republic of Schwarzenberg

Austria: Saint Peter and Paul Church in Götzens

On Thursday I got two postcards: one from Austria and one from Belgium.

The card from Austria shows the Saint Peter and Paul Church in Götzens. Götzens is a community in Tyrol and lies on a terrace of the highlands above Tyrol's capital Innsbruck. Like so many little towns in Austria also Götzens is home to a magnificient church. The Saint Peter and Paul Church is considered to be one of the most beautiful village churches in the Rococo style in Austria. It was built between 1772 and 1775 by a local stonemason and architect and was consecrated in 1780. Between 1932 and his arrest in 1938 Otto Neururer, an Austrian Roman Catholic priest and the first priest to die in a Nazi concentration camp, was pastor at the church. He was beatified in 1996. 

The Peter and Paul Church is shown on a nice new stamp issued on 29th June. Not only the church itself but also a statue of Saint Paul from the church is depicted on the stamp. The respective statue of Saint Peter is shown on the special postmark, which also declares the church as Rokokojuwel (Rococo Jewel). A definitive about accessories and ornaments of traditional costumes (issued 01-04-2020) was used on the card as well.

Thank You very much Anita!

Belgium: Grand Place in Brussels

On Thursday I got two postcards: one from Belgium and one from Austria.

The card from Belgium is a nice reminder of My Trip to Brussels back in 2017. It is really a beautiful city and definitely worth a visit! Shown on the card is a view of the Grand Place, the main square of Belgium's capital which was once an important political and commercial centre. On the far right side of the card you can see a part of the Town Hall. Due to its homogeneous buildings the square is considered to be one of the most beautiful squares in Europa and as such it also became a popular tourist destination. Since 1985 is the Grand Place on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The stamp is from the ongoing series about Geometry in Nature. This year on 25th January five stamps were issued about the Pentagon. This is one of them. You can see a second one here. The stamp got cancelled with a special postmark from Brussels.

Thank You very much William!

France: Boulogne-sur-Mer

On Wednesday I got two postcards: one from France and one from Italy.

The card from France shows various views of Boulogne-sur-Mer. Boulogne-sur-Mer is a city in northern France and France's leading fishing port. The city was used for the conquest of Britain during the Roman period. On the upper middle picture you can see the Belfry of Boulogne-sur-Mer, which is as one of the Belfries of Belgium and France since 2005 on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Like Italy also France made some changes with their stamp issues, but the situation there is a bit more complicated. Instead of just postponing all issues, some were postponed and some remained on their initial issue dates. Some stamps were also officially issued on their originally planned dates, but just became available outside of Paris much later. One of the latter stamps is this year's EUROPA stamp. It was officially issued on 11th May, but in the philatelic shop of Boulogne-sur-Mer for example it was not available before mid-June. That stamp was used on this card and got cancelled in the philatelic shop of Boulogne-sur-Mer.

On Wednesday I also got a big cover from France with a FDC of this EUROPA stamp inside. The cover also included an FDC of this year's EUROPA stamp of Andorra's French Post (issued 11-05-2020).

On the cover itself two stamps with a special postmark from Boulazac were used. The stamps are from the annual series about European Capitals and this year feature Dublin (issued 13-03-2020). In total four stamps were issued. These two show Dublin Castle and Trinity College, the other two show the Ha'penny Bridge and the Cathedral.

Like usual from the French postmarking centre they also included the cover which was used to send the covers to them. On this cover one stamp about the Salon Philatélique de Printemps in Dole (issued 30-03-2020) and one about the birth centenary of René Guy Cadou (issued 17-02-2020) were used.

Thank You very much William!

Italy: Sancarlone in Arona

On Wednesday I got two postcards: one from Italy and one from France.

The card from Italy shows Sancarlone in Arona. Arona is a town on Lago Maggiore and a popular tourist destination. Sancarlone is a massive copper statue erected between 1614 and 1698. With 23,5m, 35m with pedestral, it was once the tallest statue in the Western World. It represents Charles Borromeo, a Catholic saint and former archbishop of Milan. The interior can be accessed by narrow stairs and ladders allowing visitors to peer through the eyes and ears. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the designer of the Statue of Liberty, visited Arona in 1869 to study the statue's structure.

Due to Covid-19 Italy, like some other European countries, stopped to issue stamps at the end of February and just resumed the issuing in early May. Since then stamps are issued nearly weekly. The delicious stamp on the right was issued on 19th June and celebrates the 130th anniversary of Pasta Divella. The stamp on the left is one of the common Italian Mail stamps (from set of three) (issued 01-07-2010). Interestingly this card seems to have travelled faster than usual. It reached me after just two days.

Thank You very much Davide!

cover from Germany

On Wednesday I got not only two postcards but also a cover from Germany.

Stamp:

Nasturtium (issued 01-07-2019)

with a special postmark about the 250th birthday of aviation pioneer Albrecht Ludwig Berblinger, the Tailor of Ulm

cover from the USA

On Tuesday I got a cover from the USA.

Used for postage were two complete stamp sets. The first one is about Balloons and was issued on 31st March 1983. The second set was issued on 13th June 1974 and shows different Minerals.

Inside were two postcards.

The first card is the official card of the first Southwestern Postcrossing Meet-up held on 2nd April 2016. The card was signed during that meet-up and even more special it got cancelled with a special Postcrossing postmark. So far I only knew that the third and fourth Southwestern Meet-ups got special postmarks, so it is very interesting to see that also the first one had one.

The second card shows an old poster of the Joshua Tree National Park. Joshua Tree National Park is an American national park in California. It includes parts of two deserts, the higher Mojave Desert and the lower Colorado Desert, and is named for the Joshua trees native to the Mojave Desert. Originally declared a national monument in 1936, Joshua Tree was redesignated as a national park in 1994. The poster is one of the 35000 designs created by the Works Progress Administration between 1935 and 1943 to stir the public's imagination, hence it says Joshua Tree National Monument. On the backside are postmarks of the national park.

Also in the cover were many mint older stamps from the USA and the United Nations. Here you can see just four of them. I will upload them all to my stamp blog in the next days.

Thank You very much Sam-Qiuto!

Austria: Giant Panda Twins from Vienna

On Saturday I got a postcard from Austria.

It shows the Giant Panda twins Fu Feng and Fu Bao at the Tiergarten Schönbrunn. The Tiergarten Schönbrunn in Vienna was established in 1752 and is thus the oldest zoo of the World being still open. Already since 2003 the zoo is home to Giant Pandas. Due to the big breeding successes they are allowed to stay longer in Vienna than the usual ten years. When I visited the Tiergarten Schönbrunn in 2014, it was home to three Giant Pandas: Yang Yang (female), Long Hui (male) and their cub Fu Bao (male). Fu Bao (born in 2013) was already the third cub of Yang Yang and Long Hui. Fu Feng and Fu Bao are the youngest cubs of Yang Yang and Long Hui. They were born in August 2016 just four months before their father Long Hui died. 

Beside a definitive about accessories and ornaments of traditional costumes (issued 01-04-2020) a personalised stamp about Fu Feng was used. Also the postmark shows a Giant Panda. It is actually the First Day Special Postmark of the new Crypto Stamp, but in Austria these postmarks can also be used on other stamps. Interestingly also postmarks from Graz and Vienna were used.

So far the Giant Pandas of Vienna were not only shown on multiple personalised stamps but also on a nice souvenir sheet. However as they are now already so long in Vienna, the sheet is quite old. It was issued on 14th April 2003.

Thank You very much for the nice card Anita!

Germany: Archaeological Park of Xanten

On Wednesday I got a postcard from Germany.

It shows the Harbor Temple in the Archaeological Park of Xanten. As Colonia Ulpia Traiana Xanten was one of the most important Roman cities in Germany and also the third largest Roman city north of the Alps. It was given the rights of a colonia in 110 by the Roman emperor Trajan and existed roughly until 275, but earlier it was already the site of the castrum Vetera, which was destroyed during the Revolt of the Batavi in 70. By the 19th century not much of the Roman city was left. Mainly in the 1950s and 1960s the city was excavated and reconstructed in parts. In 1977 the Archaeological Park was opened, extended since then it is now one of the largest archaeological open-air museums in the World. Even today excavations are carried out and during the summer there is the chance for university students to follow archaeologists at work. Reconstructed buildings today include city walls, a mansio, an amphitheatre, temples and parts of an aqueduct. Also a museum is located in the park. 

EDIT: As part of the Lower German Limes is Xanten since July 2021 on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

One of the two stamps showing a panorama of Bonn (issued 02-01-2020), the former capital of West Germany, was used on this card.

Thank You very much Marcel!

Germany: Schulze-Delitzsch-House

On Tuesday I got a postcard from Germany.

It shows the Schulze-Delitzsch-House in Delitzsch. Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch, born in Delitzsch in 1808, was a German politician and economist. He was responsible for the organizing of the World's first credit unions and was also co-founder of the German Progress Party. In this house in Delitzsch, which back then belonged to a master shoemaker, he initiated in 1849 the foundation of the first cooperative in Germany. As such it is an important historic site, but it is not very well known and it was just after the German Reunification that the house was saved from its ruinous condition. Since then it houses the German Cooperative Museum. In 2016 the museum had a share in the successful inscription of the Idea and practice of organizing shared interests in cooperatives on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of the UNESCO.

One of the two stamps showing a panorama of Bonn (issued 02-01-2020), the former capital of West Germany, was used on this card.

Thank You very much Marcel!

Norway: New Munch Museum

On Tuesday I got my stamp order from Norway which also included a maxicard about the New Munch Museum in Oslo. 

Edvard Munch is probably the most famous Norwegian artist of all times. When he died in 1944, he left everything he owned in terms of paintings, sketches, photographs and sculptures to Oslo Municipality. Already in 1963, for Munch's 100th birthday, a museum was opened with this donation and other artworks, but back in 2008 a decision was reached to build a new museum for the collection, as the old museum was insufficient to display and maintain the collection. The new museum with 13 floors on Oslo's waterfront was designed by Juan Herreros and will open in fall 2020. It was created to reach a broader audience and to experience Edvard Munch's life and art in a completely new way. To commemorate the new museum the Norwegian Post issued a stamp (issued 12-06-2020), which was used on this maxicard. I really like the design of the stamp with the new building in the front and a painting by Munch in the background. The special postmark shows the museum from a different perspective and shown on the card is Munch's painting Train Smoke from 1900. This is just one of the 28000 works of Edvard Munch, which are part of the museum's collection. The most famous for sure is The Scream, of which two of four versions are housed in the Munch Museum. 

Germany: Kiel Canal

This year the Kiel Canal turns 125 years old and some philatelic celebrations took place. In total four special postmarks from cities along the canal were available, which I all got for my collection. One card and two covers with the first two postmarks arrived last Thursday, two covers with the other two covers arrived on Tuesday.

Luckily I was able to get a single postcard showing cruise ships in the canal. The Kiel Canal, or Nord-Ostsee-Kanal in German, is a 98km-long canal in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. It was finished in 1895 and links the North Sea at Brunsbüttel to the Baltic Sea at Kiel-Holtenau. An average of 460km is saved by using the Kiel Canal instead of going around the Jutland Peninsula. This not only saves time but also avoids storm-prone seas and having to pass through the Sound or Belts. The canal took over 9000 workers eight years to build and on 20 June 1895 the canal was officially opened by Kaiser Wilhelm II as Kaiser Wilhelm Kanal, named after his grandfather Kaiser Wilhelm I. After World War I the Treaty of Versailles required the canal to be open to vessels of commerce and of war of any nation at peace with Germany, while leaving it under German administration. The Nazis later repudiated its international status in 1936, but after World War II the canal was reopened to all traffic and in 1948 its current name was adopted. Today it is one of the busiest artificial waterways in the World. 

On this card I used the special postmark from Rendsburg.

As I only had one card, I also got all four postmarks on normal covers. There are three postmarks about the actual anniversary from Rendsburg, Brunsbüttel and Kiel and a fourth postmark about the 125th anniversary of the Lighthouse Kiel-Holtenau located at the canal. Just like on the card I also used definitives on the covers.

The German Post also celebrated with a special prepaid postcard (issued 04-06-2020). I bought that one cancelled on the first day at my local post office.

Germany: SiegfriedMuseum in Xanten

On Saturday I got a postcard from Germany.

It shows the SiegfriedMuseum in Xanten. According to the legend of the Nibelungs, the mythical Siegfried was born in the city. Although this tradition was abused by the Nazis, the city now also uses it for its city marketing. In 2010 a museum about the legend of the Nibelungs and its reception was opened. Originally called Nibelungen[h]ort, it is now the SiegfriedMuseum. Unfortunately I was not able to find any information why it was renamed or when.

One of the two stamps showing a panorama of Bonn (issued 02-01-2020), the former capital of West Germany, was used on this card.

Thank You very much Marcel!

Germany: Leonardo's World in Hanover

On Friday I got a postcard from Germany.

It is the seventh card I bought during my recent trip to the Lower Saxony State Museum in Hanover. Before the museums were closed due to Covid-19, I was really looking forward to the trip to this museum, as a new special exhibition would have been opened in late March. While the museum published teasers of the exhibition online during the closure, it was just opened in early May. At first face masks had to be worn, but luckily they changed it to a suggestion before my visit on Whit Sunday. While face masks should always be worn when you are not able to keep enough distance, it is actually nice that you can take them off when you are alone in a room (which happens quite often in most museums, but which would not be allowed when the face masks are obligatory). The new exhibition is called Leonardo's World and deals with the life of Leonardo da Vinci. However no actual paintings, drawings or other "real" exhibits were shown in this exhibition, but only videos. In parts this was very nice and after a nearly three-month hiatus I was especially happy to visit a museum again, but otherwise I think I would have been a bit disappointed. Available in the museum shop were some generic postcards of Leonardo's paintings, so I decided to take this one of the Vitruvian Man. 

I used this card to get a special postmark about International Museum Day, which this year was more or less completely digital, as during the preparations it was not clear whether the museums would be allowed to reopen before that date. Here in the region the museums however were allowed to open and mostly offered some small events or at least free entry.