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: Mountains

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Mountains'.

In the Netherlands there aren't real mountains (the highest one is a 322 meters high hill) but fortunately elsewhere in the world there are beautiful ones.
The following mountains all happen to be covered with snow.

For instance the famous mount Olympus in Greece. As a child I loved to read mythology stories, and according to these, the ancient Greek gods and goddesses had their home on this mountain:



(See more Greek mountains on Joy's blog post of today.)

A snowy mountain in Norway:



Australian Alp in Victoria, Australia:



And simply but beautifully designed Austrian Alps from Austria:



See more beautiful mountains on beautiful stamps at and via 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.