Sunday Stamps: 'Y' is for ijsbeer, ijs and ijsvogel

This Sunday the theme of Sunday Stamps is the letter Y.

In Dutch we name it 'Griekse IJ', or i-grec, literally 'Greek Y', as it origins from the Greek alphabet's letter Ypsilon or upsilon.
Words in Dutch starting with a 'y' are known internationally, like yak, yoghurt and yoga. Be it that the pronounciatin of the Dutch 'g' in these words is different from the English, Spanish, French and German pronounciation (the Dutch 'g' sounds like the Spanish 'j'). The word 'year' in Dutch is 'jaar', so yearly events and anniversaries won't count for my blog post on the letter of today :-)

Of course I couldn't find stamps on yoghurt, yak, yoga. But in Dutch we can 'cheat' a little, without cheating: when naming the 'Y' in the alphabet we pronounce it like the 'IJ'. The ij is used and pronounced as a vowel, and there are several words starting with this 'ij'.
Like ijs, which means both icecream and ice.

From a Finnish postcrosser I received this snowy and icy stamp. It must be so ijskoud - cold as ice - there, that rivers freeze into ijs:



In the Netherlands there is the ijsvogel, literally 'ice bird', though in English he and she are named 'kingfisher'. Arnold Voordewind, a Dutch phographer, took this beautiful photo and turned it into this stamp:



From FinnBadger I received this wonderful stamp from the United Nations, showing an ijsbeer ('beer' pronounced as 'bear'; the English 'beer' in Dutch is 'bier').
In English this animal is named 'polar bear', though in Dutch it is simply an ijsbeer:



Despite of the name 'ijsbeer' the environment of the ijsbeer is lacking ijs / ice more and more. Climate change, global warming, these facts are a serious thing. And does not only make the ijsberen cry, but also us, humans, in the end will have to face the bad sides of our over-use of natural sources...

This beautiful stamp sheet shows the sad reality and the sadness of the ijsbeer:



I received this wonderful sheet by surprise from Virna from Indonesia - thank you so much!


More stamps on the letter 'Y' (and maybe an other 'IJ'?) you can find at and via Sunday Stamps.

Sunday Stamps: 'X' is for xylofoon, and Xerxes and Xhosa

For today's theme of Sunday Stamps, the letter 'x', I had to borrow pictures from the internet, as I didn't find stamps in my collection whose content starts with an 'x'.

The Dutch word that immediately comes into mind is the xylofoon. It sounds similar to the English xylophone. On the internet I found this French stamp, showing one:



The neXt words are similar in Dutch and many other languages:

On the internet I searched for stamps about the historical figure Xerxes (I or II). But the only one directly showing 'xerxes' was this stamp of this ant whose second name is xerxes:



Years ago I saw a nice movie (one of my favourites), located in the south of Africa, whose main character was named Xi. I thought them to speak Xhosa, but I was wrong, though the language might have some similarities (I should study on that to be sure). Despite of this, 'Xhosa', both language and people, of course offer a new chance to find stamps. And I found stamps dedicated to the Xhosa people, among them this one:



See what other stamps related to the letter 'x' mail lovers have found on and via today's Sunday Stamps!

In: from Hungary

This wonderful postcard shows a wellknown character. Micu found this card in Berlin, and sent it from Hungary, as you can see on the wonderful stamps:



Manyi Kiss was a Hungarian actress. And bélyegzók pecsétnyomók do mean something like 'stamp' and 'seal', which are favourite themes of mine.
Thank you so much, Micu! Your card arrived in time and I am happy with it!!

In: from Spain

This special mail from Eva arrived already a week ago, but I thought today is a good day to open it. Such a great message on the postcard, and the accompanying mail things are, what shall I say, in one word: great! Despite of the actual size: see these very tiny Snail Mail Snail stamps!



Thank you so much, Eva!!!

Postcards for the Weekend: Aerial views

This weekend the theme of Postcards for the Weekend is 'Aerial views'.

I'd like to share postcards of three cities in the Netherlands. Haarlem, Amersfoort and Utrecht are rather unknown to tourists and other visitors from abroad, but I think them pretty cities, worth a visit.



The postcard above shows part of the city center of Haarlem, in the province Noord-Holland in the west of the Netherlands. Did you know that Harlem (New York) was named after this city?
In Haarlem there's (besides the Frans Hals Museum) the Netherlands' oldest museum, the Teylers Museum. This museum is located at the river Spaarne, which you can see clearly on this aerial view.



Amersfoort is a city more eastwards, in the central province of Utrecht. The inner city of Amersfoort has been preserved well since the Middle Ages: among others, part of the old city wall and gates still are there. This aerial view offers an impression of the medieval city-architecture. However, Amersfoort meanwhile has grown, outside the city wall, to a city of 155,000 inhabitants in the municipality (and 287,110 in the metropole).



More or less inbetween Haarlem and Amersfoort there is the capital of the province Utrecht: the city of the same name. Utrecht has a pretty city center, too. You can wander, shop, and take a coffee or tea (and lunch and dine) at terraces located besides the canals. A landmark is the Dom Tower. You can see the tower on this postcard. It is the tallest belfry in the Netherlands, but an even more special thing about this tower is, that it has been separated from the rest of the Dom Church. You can read the story here, and do you notice this fact, when looking close at the postcard?


Sometimes I wonder if birds - for whom aerial views might be normal - would see the same things as we see, I guess they will focus on other details when flying above our cities :-)


I hope you've enjoyed watching my contribution for this weekend. Be sure to check Connections to the World and the links mentioned there, to see what more beautiful things postcards lovers are showing for this week's Postcards for the Weekend!

Postcards for the Weekend: Winter scenes

This weekend's Connections to the World theme is 'Winter scenes'.
At the moment it is cloudy, here in the Netherlands. Sometimes rainy, and when going outside one could think it to be not only winter, but also autumn or spring. In the start of last December there were some days full of snow, and the weather forecast says it might be snowing next week, or not.
At least there are postcards who show snow. And thanks to 'Postcards for the Weekend' I was triggered to share them with you.

The postcard above I received from Margit from Germany, a cute one of Little Mole, or Krtek, and his woodland friends.



Although I dislike the cold and slipperiness of snow, sleighing is fun. This postcard is an illustration by Fiep Westendorp.

The postcard below I had made out of a photo I took some winters ago, from footsteps of our feathered friends on the pathway next to our home.



And this is a regular postcard, showing a winter scene in the province of Drenthe:



I used it for a chaincard, and after a journey via the USA, Indonesia (without melting!) and Russia the card returned home safely, the backside filled with snowmen:




See more winter scenes at and via Postcards for the Weekend!

Sunday Stamps: 'W' is for Waddenzee, wet, wortelen and wetenschap

Today's Sunday Stamps' theme is words (woorden, in Dutch) starting with a 'w'.

On top you can see a few stamps, issued in 2003, in honour of the Waddenzee (Wadden Sea). This sea, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is located between the Waddeneilanden (Wadden Islands) and the mainland north of the Netherlands, and of Germany and west of Danmark.
These stamps are part of two stamp sheets; the complete sheets and some more Waddenzee stamps you can see here.

While the Waddenzee and all other seas are wet, the Dutch word 'wet' has a totally different meaning. I think you won't guess which meaning...



Right! 'Wet' means 'law'!.. Weird, this false friend is, isn't it?!

The theme of the stamp above is the Wetboek van Strafrecht, literally 'Law book of penalty law/justice', in English known as the Criminal Code or penal law / Penal Code (according to my woordenboek = words book = dictionary).
There are several words concerning the 'wet'. As a non-native English speaker, for me the question when to use the (English) nouns 'law', 'justice', 'act', 'legislation', 'regulation', 'right' (in Civil Right) and adjectives like 'legal', 'lawful', 'legitimate', 'rightful', might be similar as the question is for non-Dutch speaking concerning the (Dutch) nouns 'wet', 'recht', 'wetgeving', 'regelgeving' and adjectives like 'wettelijk', 'juridisch', 'legaal', 'legitiem', 'rechtelijk' and so :-)

Before you get too dizzy of all these words, I'll continue with a more concrete subject:



A 'wortel' is a carrot. 'Wortel' is one of the few Dutch words which has two types of plural. Usually Dutch words are made plural by adding -en to the word, and only a few words become plural by adding -s. However, the plural of 'wortel' can be both 'wortelen' and 'wortels'.
On this stamp you see a 'bos wortelen'. 'Bos' in general means 'forest', but concerning wortelen and flowers, it means a 'bunch'.
And did you note: how nice is the tiny picture of the land this stamp comes from?!

The word 'wortel' also is used for other plants' roots, and has a mathematic meaning, too: square root. And the verb 'worteltrekken' (literally: to push carrot/root) means 'to extract a square root'.
This sounds scientific, doesn't it?
The Dutch word for 'scientific' is 'wetenschappelijk', and 'science' is 'wetenschap'. The professional who is practising science we name a 'wetenschapper'. 'Weten' means 'to know', and is pronounced different from 'wet': 'the Dutch 'wet' sounds like the English 'wet', in contrary the first 'e' of the Dutch 'weten' is pronounced as a 'long e' and sounds a bit like the 'ai' in 'wait' or the 'ei' in 'weight'

Severo Ochoa is a scientist from Spain. Here you can see him next to an other Nobel Prize winner (Juan Ramón Jiménez was a poet), on a stamp sheet showing all kinds of results from wetenschap:



Evgeny Zababakhin and Boris Petrovsky are Russian wetenschappers:



From the Netherlands Willem Einthoven, who invented the first practical ECG:



Frits Zernike (of the phase-contrast microscope):



And Peter Debije / Debye:



Via 'populaire wetenschap' ('popular science') science can be made more widespread and popular. In cooperation with the Dutch science museum Nemo, Dutch Post has issued this stamp sheet named 'ontdek de wetenschap' ('discover science') on which you can see some wetenschappelijke proeven (scientific trials) which are easy to do by yourself:



For professional scientists there is the Koninklijke Nederlandse Academie van Wetenschappen (Royal Dutch Academy of Science). The KNAW celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2008, for which Dutch Post issued this anniversary stamp, 'Magie van de Wetenschap', 'the Magic of Science':




See more stamps on the letter 'w' at today's Sunday Stamps!

Sunday Stamps: 'V' is for voetstap, vogelbekdier and verkeersveiligheid

This Sunday the theme of Sunday Stamps is the letter 'V'.

Inspired by Eva's blog post of one week ago, showing a stamp on which voetstappen in the snow were pictured, I wanted to show you one other stamp showing a voetstap.
However, I couldn't find it in time. But luckily suddenly a voetstap stamp has arrived in my mailbox last week! On the back of a postcard which I showed you last week already.

These are voetstappen, also known as footsteps, in the Spanish sand:




A theme of which I can show you plenty of stamps, is 'vogels', 'birds'. Because I couldn't choose from all pretty bird stamps which I have received and which I bought to send out, I decided to show a stamp of a mammal, whose name in Dutch starts with 'vogel', too: the vogelbekdier. Vogel means bird, and bek means beak, dier is animal, so it is a 'bird-beak-animal'.
As many of you know, the vogelbekdier, or platypus, is one of my favourite animals, and I've showed you an other Australian platypus stamp before. This time I like to share this maximumcard, which I am very happy to have in my collection:




Finally a word, related to an important issue: safety first! 'Safety' in English means 'veiligheid' in Dutch. And 'verkeersveiligheid' means 'safety in traffic' (verkeer). Many fatal accidents have been prevented since the veiligheidgordels = safety belts have been introduced, and some more fatal accidents are missing since the use of veiligheidstoelen, special safety car seat for kids, is obliged.
Russian Post has issued this colourful stamp on this theme:




It is safe and in a way obliged, to check today's Sunday Stamps to see what words other mail lovers have chosen for the letter 'v'!

In: from Spain

Cheers!
This coffee postcard arrived yesterday, so just in time to say 'Cheers!' and 'Have a happy day!' to the sender :-)

The accompanying stamp I will post on Sunday, as it has to do with the letter 'V'.

Thank you very much, Eva!