Sunday Stamps: 'K' is for krant and kasteel

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is the letter 'k'.

Inspired by Violet's post of today, I thought to share the Dutch word for 'newspaper', illustrated by stamps from Mexico, Russia and the Netherlands. In Dutch we name the newspaper 'krant'.
As far as I know, in several languages words for 'newspaper' contain some part meaning news, or time, or day, and so. For example in the German word 'Zeitung', Zeit means time. Or the French 'journal', jour = day, and in the Spanish 'periódico', 'period' has to do with time also. And 'newspaper' of course contains the word 'news'. See more translations of the word 'newspaper' via Wikipedia. The Dutch word 'krant' appears to have nothing to do with day (dag), time (tijd) or paper (papier). However, it origins from the French word 'courant' which means current, commonly, present, and the old word (plural) 'couranten' meant 'current notifications'.

I found a few stamps showing newspapers. I don't know most of these newspapers so I cannot tell which signature they have or on what 'level of quality' they are.
For example, Dutch most well-known newspaper was 'wrong' in WW2 and nowadays brings news in a sensational, not always fair way. Despite of that, and to my surprise, it alas is the best selling newspaper in the Netherlands.

Kranten (plural of krant) have been pictured on stamps from Mexico:



From Russia:



From the Netherlands:



(A newspaper and a cup of coffee to my opinion is a very pleasant combination :-) )



In contrary to the above-mentioned best selling newspaper, the 'Parool' was 'right' in WW2. It has been founded in 1940 and helped positively in the Dutch resistance against the Nazis.

The stamps above and below have been issued in 1985, 40 years after WW2 has ended.



A newspaper which is considered being of good quality (though not selling as much as the first-mentioned newspaper), is the NRC Handelsblad. When I was a child this newspaper published stories of Ollie B. Bommel and Tom Poes every day. A kind of comics, that is, pictures above and printed text below.
In 1996 the following stamp sheet was issued. I immediately had to think of the NRC newspaper. And first I thought to not post this sheet here, but then I noticed the selvage on the left, and the text, which starts saying: 'Spring had come and mister Bommel was sitting under the blooming pear tree, reading his newspaper.'



After reading the newspaper, before putting in it the recycling bin, you can make all kinds of nice things of it:



It might be clear that I have a strong preference of some of the Dutch newspapers to some other newspaper. Do you have strong opinions on the different newspapers issued in your countries?


An other word starting with the letter 'k', and probably immediately understood by all of you, is 'kasteel'.
In 2017, the Europe stamps theme is 'castles', and I am so lucky to have received some of these stamps.

From Turkey, Belarus, Russia, Estonia, and of course one of the two Dutch castle stamps:



From Greece:



From Spain, with a funny postmark:



From Spain, with a modest postmark - thus showing more of the stamp:



From Serbia:



And the other of the two Dutch stamps:



By the way, thanks to Eva, recently a postcard arrived which happens to show an other Spanish castle, the Almodovar Castle:



Worth a stamp, too, don't you think so?!

Find more stamps on the letter 'k' at and via today's Sunday Stamps!

Sunday Stamps: Cartoon characters

This Sunday Stamps theme is one of my very most favourite themes: cartoon characters.
Which I freely translated into 'cartoon and comics characters'. No need to say that I am delighted with VioletSky's choice!

Before this Sunday I thought I didn't really 'collect' postage stamps - just 'keep' them when nice stamps accidentally come into my home. However, now I realize this theme I really am collecting. That is: buy, in order to keep them in a special cartoon / comics stamp album.

Although I won't search the whole world to find them, like 'real collectors' do. Not all comic/cartoon stamps are on my wish list. For instance classic Disney stamps I won't collect. They cause a happy smile on my face, but as these are abundantly issued worldwide I prefer other people to collect them. The cartoon stamps I consciously will take home are in fact the following ones:
- Asterix and Obelix
- Smurfs
- Dutch comic/cartoon character stamps (see for instance Eva's blog post) and 'foreign' characters issued by Dutch post (see for instance the stamp sheet on top).

To my opinion many comics and animation movies aren't just meant for children.
Many animation movies contain messages for grown-ups, too. For instance 'Up' (about getting old, family and friendship) and 'Ratatouille' (also about friendship and family, and about loyalty, and Paris), are all-time favourites for that.
Stamps on these great Disney/Pixar movies were sent to me by a kind lady from the USA.



Oh, and Wall-e (the stamp on the right, the story also is about friendship) learns us about waste and shows the dangers of a sedential life!


Dutch Post recently issued regular stamps and an extra stamp set on the Dutch comic character Tom Poes and his fellow Ollie B. Bommel, for their 75th anniversary.
The stories go without text balloons but are shown as illustrations, accompanied by text printed under the comic drawings.
Dutch Post has issued Tom Poes stamps before, in 1996 this mini stamp sheet:




Finally Asterix!
As you already might have seen on the main Sunday Stamps blog, Germany has issued nice stamps on Asterix and Obelic recently.
Unfortunately I couldn't order the complete sheet via German Post, but suddenly I was lucky to be able to buy the complete stamp sheet via 'marktplaats' (Dutch ebay). Here it is:



Do you notice the mailman in the back?

Asterix (also about friendship and loyalty) learns us a little about history. Although there are some negative issues in it too, which I neglected as a child, but for which my eyes are opened now. Besides the sad destination of many swines, there are a lot of other injured, as this medical article on traumatic brain injuries proofs. Fortunately these wounded get well immediately, as is usance in comic books like these.

The Asterix albums are a 'must' for language lovers, too. Besides Asterix stamps I'm collecting also one specific album in various languages: Asterix in Corsica. The fun thing about that is that there's a meeting in which characters from previous albums gather. So I learned that the small hispanic boy, Pepe Paella y Peseta in Dutch, is named Pepe Costa y Bravo in German. And the main Corsican character, Ocatarinetabellatchitchix (in French), in the Dutch album has been named after a Dutch song: Ozewiezewozewiezewallakristallix!
Now we can get information like this via the internet, but in the eighties, when I got my first Asterix in Corsica album in an other language (Spanish, at that time) it was so special!

Find more great cartoon stamps on/via the Sunday Stamps blog post of 19th of June.