Postcards for the weekend: City views

This weekend's theme of Postcards for the Weekend is 'City views' (at daylight).

A nice way to visit a city is to travel by train. To me railway stations in many cases are a gateway to a city, because you can enter the heart of the city directly. In contrary to highways, not to speak from parking problems in at least the Dutch main cities.



Eva sent me these two postcards of the Atocha Railway station in Madrid. A city I never have visited so far, even though my family is hispanophilic - my brother and sister-in-law even chose to live in the south of Spain many years ago and they are still living there, along with my niece and nephew who have been born there.



An other place I have never been to but which I should visit - at least this interesting architectured museum Guggenheim - is Bilbao, in the north of Spain:



From Spain to the south there is Morocco. I received this pretty postcard from Essaouira, a city at the West coast of the country:




Stamp on the envelope containing the Madrid postcards (thus sent from Morocco):



Stamp on the Bilbao postcard:



Stamp accompanying the sea gulls:




See more beautiful city view postcards on this weekend's Postcards for the Weekend, and follow the links mentioned.

Postcards for the Weekend: Iconic persons

This weekend the Postcards for the Weekend theme is 'an iconic person'.

I had to think a lot about this theme. Of course I have certain thoughts and feelings, concerning the word 'iconic'. But I thought it good to first look for the official definition:

Definition of iconic
1: of, relating to, or having the characteristics of an icon
2: a : widely recognized and well-established an iconic brand name
b : widely known and acknowledged especially for distinctive excellence, for example an iconic writer, a region's iconic wines

Hmm, iconic people.. Who to choose.. A famous actor/actress, a scientist, a politician?

'Iconic' to my opinion also has some mystery in it. A contemporary artist who by my interpretation of the definition of 'iconic' matches most to this weekend's theme, is Banksy. He (or she? or they?) makes strong statements, in places all-over the world. And succeeds in keeping a mystery meanwhile.
Recently I read an article in which was said the identity is revealed, but I choose to respect Banksy's wish for privacy, for being Banksy: incognito and iconic.

So, no photo of Bansky himself (or herself, or themselves?), but some of his iconic works.

This man, throwing flowers instead of stones, to me is a real iconic person, too:



These postcards I have sent out for Postcrossing. I had made them from pictures, downloaded from Banksy's website some years ago. To me all these images are iconic, and definitely my favourite ones.







See more, other iconic people at and via this weekend's Postcards for the weekend!

Sunday Stamps: Weather

This time the Sunday Stamps theme is ' Weather'.

On 31 January 2004 Dutch Post, then named TPG Post, issued a stamp sheet in honour of the 150th anniversary of the KNMI.

The KNMI, 'Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut', in English 'Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute', is the Dutch national weather service. The tasks of KNMI are weather forecasting, and monitoring / researching / providing information concerning the weather, climate, air quality and seismology.

Until recently I had a complete stamp sheet, but alas (?) I am using the stamps for outgoing mail. So now I only can show you these remaining stamps:



The stamps themselves are similar (that is, the 'regen' = rain stamps, and 'zon'= sun stamps, all including a map of our country and rainbows). However, for this Sunday Stamps' theme the selvage is interesting, too, as it tells about temperature records (the selvage on the left) and about weather types.
Fortunately I found a picture of the complete sheet on the internet (see below) on which I could find the missing weather:

onweer = thunderstorm
buien = showers
wind = wind
sneeuw = snow
hagel = hail



Find more weather on stamps at and via this Sunday's Sunday stamps!

Postcards for the Weekend: Historic sites / buildings

This weekend's Postcards for the Weekend's' theme is 'Historic sites / Buildings'.

I always thought that water pumping windmills were a typical feature of the Netherlands, as much of the land (polder) has been made by water management. Until Johm sent me this postcard, showing the Hunsett Mill, a draingae mill at the River Ant in the English county of Norfolk. The present mill has been constructed in 1860, although there has been an earlier mill on the site since 1698.
This present mill was used for water pumping functions until approximately 1910.



In the Netherlands there are many mills. too. Some used to be used for grinding grain, others for sawing wood. And similar to the mill shown above, many mills have been used to keep the land dry.
The most wellknown is this serie of 19 windmills in Kinderdijk, built around 1740 and now a UNESCO world heritage site:



Although famous and attracting visitors worldwide, I never had visited Kinderdijk until a few years ago. And despite of the many tourists at that time, I thought it a relaxed, nice place.



See more interesting historic sites and buildings at and via this weekend's Postcards for the Weekend!

In: from Morocco (and Taiwan)

Pretty mail from Eva! The postcard shows a photo, made by Chie from Taiwan, and although originally made for Eva, Eva forwarded it to me, because I love wind turbines.

And I received a so-called 'blanco negro gris' - 'black white grey' letter, as a successor of a beautiful rainbow coloured letter (which I still have to post).
Eva added these two great animal illustrations to her kind words:



:-)



:-)))

Both postcard and letter arrived the same day, on the 13th of June. However, they must have been sent on different days, as the letter's postmark says 17 May, and the postcard's postmark 5th of (May of June?).





Thank you very much, Eva!

In: from the USA

Both FinnBadger and Eva completed the 'A to Z challenge' in April, a wonderful and amazing achievement. For that reason I sent them a special 'A to Z' congratulations mail (see Eva's and FinnBadger's blog).

On my turn I felt lucky, not only by enjoying the forementioned blogs, but also by all kinds of kind and beautiful mail, both FinnBadger and Eva send to me.
As I like typography (and civil airplanes), and there happened to be a matching magazine cover, FinnBadger surprised me by sending this great A-Z envelope.
By the way, do you notice that the airplane on the stamp is flying upside down?

In the envelope a card showing one of my other favourite themes, being born in the Year of the Dragon: a YotD-Dragon!



Thank you very much, FinnBadger!

Sunday stamps: Fonts

This Sunday the theme of Sunday Stamps is 'fonts'.

From my early teens on I loved typography. As a volunteer to our school magazine I drew existing fonts in the margins of my exercise books and I tried to invent new fonts. We didn't have computers at that time, and rub-ons were to expensive for us as a scholar, so the other volunteers were happy with my drawn typography, and I was in my element.

On this blog I did show some stamps labeled 'typography' before. For today I like to share some newly received stamps.
In general I prefer to see (and to draw!) printed characters, especially sans serif fonts like 'good old' helvetica and the newer one calibri.
In contrary, the stamps I show today happen to appear handwritten:

From Greece, part of a four stamps set issued in 2016, themed 'Year of Greece in Russia':



From Hungary, one out of four stamps issued 'for youth 2013'. In that year author and poet Sándor Weöres was born 100 years ago. His work 'Bóbita' he wrote in 1955:



A curly one from the USA:



And here some printed letter types, the stamp text in serif, and a sans serif postmark:



Finally some numbers, designed by typographist and letter artist Walter Nikkels:



See more fonts and accompanying interesting information at and via today's Sunday Stamps blog.

Postcard from last weekend: street view

Due to personal circumstances (among others, see my recent blog post about pet stamps) I missed the previous weekend's Postcards for the Weekend.
The theme was 'Street scenes', a theme I love. So still it inspires me to share postcards.

These postcards show two typical Dutch common street scenes. Be it that the scene shown above is common in four cities only: besides Amsterdam there are trams in Utrecht, Den Haag/the Hague and Rotterdam (plus a few neighbouring towns). In the past there have been more tram cities, but in the majority of them alas trams have disappeared from the streets. As I love public transport, I of course am happy that we're still able to catch the tram in present days.

The other street scene is common, too. Many Dutch travel to school, study, work by bicycle. And every now and then (fortunately not so often) you can see bicyclists stop in the middel of the street. Fortunately there are many good cycle paths besides the roads.
Helmets are not obliged for bicyclists, so most Dutch - including me - ride the bike without them, when riding the bike in daily life. Only sport bicyclists (bicycle racing, mounain biking) do wear a helmet.



See more beautiful and interesting street views at and via the previous weekend's Postcards for the Weekend!