Postcards for the Weekend: Bridges

This weekend's Postcards for the Weekend theme is 'Bridges'.

As some of you know, bridges are one of my favourite themes. They connect people, cities and sometimes even countries. No surprise that I posted several bridge stamps and postcards before.

First I'll take you to Asia, the continent I've never been to myself. Thanks to postcrossing and to instagram friends I 'traveled' virtually to beautiful places, by receiving and enjoying pretty postcards.

This postcard I received from a Postcrosser from China. The back of this card doesn't say where this bridge is located. The sender lives in Wuhan, so maybe this beautiful, quiet looking place might be in this area.



From my instagram friend Jael I received this postcard from Singapore. All attention, of both the artists and us, card watchers, goes to the Merlion, but looking close, you can see a bridge on the right. It's one of the bridges over the Singapore River.



This bridge I drew - as a postcard - for a mail art project in Indonesia. It is the Kahayan bridge in Palangkaraya, Borneo. I chose to draw it because the mail art project was in honour of the 60th anniversary of this Indonesian city.



From Asia to Europe.

In Venice there is a lot of water, and fortunately there are bridges, too. Most famous I think the Bridge of Sighs, but the bridge I received thanks to Rio is a more innocent one:



On the back side she added a matching stamp and postmark, showing a larger bridge from Venice:



From John I received a nice postcard showing maybe one of the most well-known bridges:



I replied by this postcard, which to my surprise was available in a local store, here in the Netherlands:



I don't know if it is a good or bad habit, but at least it made and makes me happy: when visiting familiar cities (among them Nijmegen, the city where I grew up, and Murcia in Spain, which is the home city of my brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew) I sometimes send postcards to myself. Not that many, so far maybe 7 or so, but to my surprise the majority of the postcards show bridges.

Here you can see two bridges over the Rio Segura in Murcia:



This is the Railway bridge over the river Waal in Nijmegen:



The same bridge you can see in the very back of the photo on bottom on this card:



The two other bridges are the Waalbrug (my favourite bridge as it reminds me of my former 'home'), and a pedestrian bridge, which is new to me.


As a 'dessert' here are some stamps:

A bridge in a winter scene in Finland:



And bridges from Singapore, Hong Kong, Russia and the Netherlands, gathered in one chaincard about this theme:



The stamp bottom left shows a newly built bridge over the forementioined river Waal.

See more bridges at and via this weekend's Postcards for the Weekend!

In: from Hungary and Italy

Such a great surprise: Two musical postcards I received from two different countries on the same day from the same sender, Micu!

The singer and pianist started their journey to the Netherlands in Italy. And the Opera House is located in Budapest, Hungary.



On the back side of both cards pretty stamps: the Plebiscito Square in Napoli:



And the nagy smaragdfémdarázs, which in English is "Large Cuckoo Wasp", but literally translated it will have to to something with the bright colourful smaragd ('smaragd' also is Dutch, and means emerald). Ah, the online translator says 'large emerald metallic wasp'.
More stamps from this serie you can find here.



Thank you very much, Micu, köszönöm nagyon!

Postcards for the weekend: Love

The following postcard I happened to have received recently. It matches so well to this weekend's Postcards for the Weekend theme!

Rio and I exchange a postcard every now and then. She happened to have a serie of postcards of her hometown Venezia, and randomly chose this one to send to me. Voilá, this is clearly the theme, Love.



Two people, many hearts, and sharing a pizza.

On the back side Rio added pretty stamps. I imagine that the couple of the front side of this postcard, after finishing the pizza, will visit the museum on the left, and subsequently will enjoy a great evening at the theater on the right.



Thank you very much, Rio, grazie mille!

See more postcards on this theme at and via Maria's blog of this weekend.

Sunday stamps: Outer space

This Sunday's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Outer space'.

The first stamp which came into my mind is this one, received from Assel from Kazachstan.
The stamp connects our world and outer space, I mean: we watch outer space, thanks to the naked eye and to telescopes, and meanwhile one can watch us, our planet earth, from the same outer space:



Micu sent the following pretty stamps from Hungary. They are part of an eight stamps mini sheet, issued in honour of anniversaries and events in space research:



Doesn't the dog remind also you of the unfortunate pioneer space dog Laika?

In 2015 Hong Kong Post issued stamp series named 'astronomical phenomena'.
This is one stamp from this serie:



By the way, the vessel doesn't belong to the stamp, but to a pictoral postmark!


A stamp issued in Italy in honour of the exploration of Mars:




Sri Lanka has issued a stamp serie about our solar system. Thanks to Ravindra I received and subsequently scanned these:






Are you also surprised that Uranus has a ring around it? In the complete serie (see here) you can see that indeed it is Saturnus who has the clearest and largest ring.

Also the USA Post (USPS) has issued a stamp serie on the outer space. Of which I received these two:



The recent USA international 'forever' stamps show the moon and earth respectively:



In the Netherlands PostNL has issued a so-called 'postset' on Dutch astronaut André Kuipers, who worked for the European Space Agency ESA and went on a space mission twice. The 'postset' exists of a stamp sheet and three postcards. Funny enough the year of issue hasn't been written, neither on the stamp sheet, nor on the postcards front or back side. I remember André Kuipers latest (second) space mission as if it was yesterday, but when I looked it up it appeared to be already five years ago.



This stamp sheet (and my enthusiasm about this sympathetic person) I posted previously, almost three years ago, here.

The postcards I'll add here, too, as it shows beautiful views of and from outer space:








And the circle is round, I'll finish where I started by saying that our Dutch astronaut and his Russian and American colleagues returned back to earth and landed, 1st of July 2012, on a countryside in Kazachstan!

See more stamps on this theme at and via today's Sunday Stamps blog.

In: from Italy/Austria and Hungary

So much to learn by a single postcard! I always thought that Tirol and the Dolomites were located in Austria. The text in front of the card didn't give a clue: as the first words have been written in German I was confirmed in my thoughts. The stamps made the confusion complete, as they are Hungarian. Finally, thanks to wikipedia I learned that since many years the Dolomites are part of Italy. And in 2009 they were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Many thanks to Micu who has send me this beautiful view. As the post offices were closed at the moment she was there, she finally sent me the card from Hungary. Which I think great, too, and I am happy with the wonderful stamps as well as the postmark from Budapest.
I had never heard of a world conference on disaster risk reduction, so that's an other item learned today!



Thank you very much, Micu!

Sunday Stamps: Science

This Sunday Stamps theme is 'Science'. I hardly dare to say it, because I've mentioned so many favourites already, but 'science' is a theme dear to me, too.

This stamp has been issued by Italian post last year for the San Marino-Italia Techno Science Park:



This is an older stamp from Germany, which shows a portrait of Philippus von Hohenheim, better known as Paracelsus. I am not sure why he isn't looking happy on this stamp, as he has achieved several things, among these he has been credited as the founder of toxicology and for giving zinc its name: 'zincum'.



Finally a stamp sheet issued by Dutch PostNL a year ago (20th July 2015) in honour of the Nemo Science Museum in Amsterdam.
Alas I don't have the complete sheet anymore, however I found this image on the internet to show you:



Both the museum and the stamp sheet have a big similarity: they make 'science' attractive for a large public, by having people learn in a playful and interactive way.

See more stamps to the theme 'Science' at today's Sunday Stamps and follow the links mentioned there.

Sunday Stamps: Flags or ensigns

At the moment the European soccer competition (UEFA) takes place. The Netherlands doesn't participate this time, but I like to share the following soccer stamp sheet today, issued by Dutch PostNL two years ago in honour of the World Championship.
Why today? Well, this Sunday Stamps' theme is 'Flags or ensigns', and you can see the flags of the participating countries - be it in the shape of the ball.



I found some other flag stamps:

An Italian stamp, showing the flags of Italy and San Marino:



The Scottish flag:



The red and white squared flag top left is the flag of the (Dutch) province Brabant, and I think the ensign belongs to the specific group the boy and man belong to:



See more 'Flags and Ensigns' stamps at Sunday Stamps.

Sunday Stamps: Green

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Green'.

The first stamp I'd like to share with you I don't own myself. Thanks to the internet I found an image and I am happy to show it today, because it is such a matching stamp!
Today not only is a 'green' themed Sunday Stamps day, but today also is the start of the Persian New Year: Now ruz or Norooz.
For this celebration, people arrange 'haft seen', a tabletop with 7 items which start with the letter 's'. One of the items is Sabzi, which literally means both 'green' and 'vegetable'.
This stamp shows Sabzi: the green sprouts of, for example, wheat or lentils, bound together by a red ribbon.



(I think the tulip is optional, I have never seen it in real/on pictures so far.)

For anyone who is celebrating this New Year: Happy Norooz!


I happened to have joined a chaincard project themed 'green' via Instagram recently.
The postcard started its journey in the Netherlands and after a short stop in Taiwan (ROC), Japan and Italy it returned with these stamps containing the colour green:



Austria issued this stamp for the 20th anniversary of the Alps Adriatic Philately:



Much green you can see in this stamp - one of my favourites - from Japan:



'Green' of course also has to do with environment friendly issues.

These environment friendly themed stamps are from Spain:



The following five are from a 'green' ('groen', environment friendly) ten stamp sheet from the Netherlands:



'Het nieuwe werken, groene winst' means 'the new way of working, green (environmental) profit'. The laptop represents working-at-home, in order to decrease car use and traffic.

Some of the other stamps, of which the one top right says 'groene post, een goed bericht', which mean 'green mail, a good (positive) message':



More about this stamp serie (in Dutch, but I think the non-Dutch speakers will enjoy the pictures, too) on this site and about the design process by Gesina Roters on this site.
Other 'Green' stamps (among them the 'denk groen', 'think green', stamp sheet you can find on this site.

See more stamps on the theme 'Green' on the Sunday Stamps blog and the links under the blog post.