In: from Brussel and Maroc

Last weekend's theme for Postcards for the Weekend was 'anything you wish'.
I was too busy with posting stamps for Sunday Stamps and doing other things so far, so finally exactly inbetween two weekends I am posting my contribution..

Received from Eva, already almost a year ago, but finally here they are, two pretty smurfcards, from Brussel via Morocco:





I love the way Moroccan Post most of the time uses two postmarks:



Thank you very much, moltes gràcies, Eva!

Curious to know what postcards other mail lovers choose when they get the opportunity? Check Maria's blog post and the links mentioned there!

Sunday Stamps: Butterflies

This Sunday Stamps' theme is 'Butterflies or moths'.

The first butterfly stamps which come into mind are from a pretty butterfly serie, issued by Correos in Spain. This is one of them, issued in 2011:



A stamp which seems to be 'common', and which shows one of my favourite butterflies (even though I've never seen this 'common swallowtail' in real), is this Belgian one:



In the United Kingdom, Royal Mail has issued butterfly stamps as well, of which I received this one:



These 'citrus swallowtails' arrived from South Africa:



This year Dutch PostNL issues several stamp sheets in collaboration with the 'Ouderenfonds', a charity fund, founded to help elder people.
By the way, on their website - alas in Dutch only - the Ouderenfonds mentions several projects, among them a 'send a card to a lonely elder person' project, and I think the project website's name very suitable: 'no facebook'. I think it a nice initiative, and fortunately there are similar projects in other countries, too (a quick search via google learn me about, among others, this one, and this, and this, and of course we can look around in our neighbourhood or faraway family, I think there are many people to whom a real written card will bring a smile - and see, how coincidentally, this month the Mail a Smile project's theme happens to be 'Butterfly'!).

Regarding the stamp sheets, among them is a serie of four, showing both butterflies and flowers, in relation to the four seasons. One stamp of the spring sheet has been posted some Sundays ago. Above the Crocus stamp there was/is a butterfly, and also one butterfly flew in the stamp sheet edge:



One other is a serie of butterfly stamp sheets, this is one of them:



The illustrations of these stamp sheets have been created by Janneke Brinkman-Salentijn.

By the way, a year ago Dutch post already has issued a serie of four nice stamp sheets showing butterflies, be it photos instead of drawings, but also in relation to the four seasons. You can see them at PostNL's collector's shop website.

A special manner to picture butterflies is shown on this stamp sheet: butterfly silhouets. It is a sheet from the serie 'Mooi Nederland' ('beautiful Netherlands'), dedicated to the city of Amersfoort.
I was wondering what butterflies have to do with this particular city, and the only information I found is that there has been constructed a 'butterfly way' throughout the city, with butterfly friendly flowers planted in several locations.



If you look close you can see a blue butterfly on the stamps themselves.

See more colourful and beautiful butterfly stamps at Sunday Stamps.

Sunday Stamps: toys or games

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Toys or games'.

And today - 6th of December - also happens to be the day after 'Pakjesavond' ('gifts eve', Saint Nicholas' Eve), in the Netherlands the main evening in the Sinterklaas celebration. In this evening people give each other presents, accompanied by a personal poem and sometimes packed in a funny, mostly personalized way.
To be short: today in the Netherlands many children are playing with their new toys and/or games. An excellent day for this choice of theme!

I'll start with an older Europe (CEPT) stamp from Belgium.
Lucky me, I got it from a kind colleague, who had cut-out some stamps years before to give one day to someone interested, and apparently I was one of a few interested.



The stamps, issued in 1989, show marbles ('knikker' in Dutch :-) ) and remind me of playing with marbles in my childhood time. Nowadays marbles still are sold in toy stores, but I hardly (or: never) see children play with them... We have marbles at home but also my kids ignore them...

Talking about Europe, this year (2015) the Europa stamps' theme was 'old toys', so many countries have issued stamps on this theme!
See this website for all countries' contributions.

I received the Spanish stamp, a wooden train pictured, which in real smells a bit after wood:



The Dutch stamp was part of this stamp sheet, of which the other stamp shows the board game 'Mens-erger-je-niet!' ('man, don't feel annoyed!', in English better known as Ludo):



Meanwhile Dutch PostNL also has issued a stamp sheet on toys of today. Well, the Rubik's cube has celebrated his 40th birthday last year, and the game console might have newer versions nowadays :-)



In contrary to marbles, at least our son didn't ignore the cube, fortunately. And did you know that there even are international Rubik's cube (and other cubes) competitions?

See more great toys stamps on and via the Sunday Stamps blog post of today.

Sunday Stamps: commemorating a battle or disaster

Today's theme of Sunday Stamps is 'commemorating a battle or disaster'.

Personally I consider each battle, each war, a disaster. After so many decades, centuries, millennia, many people still invent the disastrous wheel of 'fight-against-them' and still didn't learn that 'them' and 'we' always is 'us', 'humans', 'world citizens', having a lot more in common than differences.

Searching my stamps collection, I couldn't find stamps which commemorate a single battle. So let me first share with you this postcard instead, showing the result of the four battles that have taken place here.
My dear ones had taken this postcard home for me. Last Thursday they happened to visit Ieper in Belgium, while I had to stay home and go to work. The postcards (I got more) and their stories increased my attention to WW1.



This postcard shows a painting by the Australian born artist William Longstaff. He painted it in 1927, after attending the unveiling of the Menin Gate Memorial in Ieper. This memorial records the names of nearly 55,000 of the missing of the Ypres Salient. At first sight it looks like a common painting of a memorial and its surroundings. But if you look close, do you see the ghost soldiers, too?!

An other postcard shows an other kind of devastation by war. The beautiful Lakenhalle in Ieper (Ypres Cloth Hall) was virtually destroyed by artillery during this First World War:



The picture has been made by one of the brothers Antony of Antony d'Ypres.
Fortunately the building has been reconstructed, between 1933 and 1967, to its prewar condition.

Back to stamps, as the theme is Sunday Stamps! And forward to the Second World War, and north to the Netherlands.

The battles which took place in the Netherlands in WWII have been relatively short, from 10 to 14 May 1940 in the greater part of the country, and until 17 May in the province Zeeland.
The battles are commemorated, especially in this '75 years after' year. However, as far as I know there haven't been issued Dutch commemorating stamps on these battles.

However several interesting stamps have been issued on various themes concerning WWII.
Of which I only have the following four:

This one on "verzet" (resistance):



And on the "geallieerden" (allies):



Operation Market Garden, in September 1944:



Operations Manna and Chowhound, end of April and first week of May 1945, in which food was dropped into the still occupied western part of the Netherlands, where the Dutch famine took a lot of victims:




Back to WWI, southward to Ieper, Belgium.
Ieper was the place where in 1915 the Canadian army physician and poet John McCrae wrote his poem 'In Flanders Fields'. The museum here is named after this poem, and the Poppies became an important symbol of this sad war. You can see a stamp in honour of the poppy on Eva's blog post of today.



For anyone who is curious to know where this museum is: it is located in the reconstructed Lakenhalle, the fore-mentioned Cloth Hall:



See more stamps on battles and disasters at today's Sunday Stamps and the links under the posts.

Out: to Belgium

Verstuurd naar België, naar een liefhebber van bomen.
Sent to Belgium, to a tree lover.

Out: to Belgium

Aap, kleurenlitho door Melanie Epps.

Monkey, colograph by Melanie Epps.