3261 ROMANIA (Bucharest) - Postcrossing Meetup, Bucharest, 20 January 2018

3261 The second postcard of the series
"100 years since the Great Union of Romania" (2/12)
- The interior of the Romanian Athenaeum

The previous postcard of the series "100 years since the Great Union of Romania" (1/12)

The second meeting of the Romanian postcrossers in the year of the Centenary of the Great Union (the 34th in total) took place on January 20, 2018 at the premises of the Philatelic Association of Bucharest. Since around this date the Romanians had other two reason to celebrate, these were also mentioned on the postcard. The first one was the National Culture Day, celebrated on January 15, the day in which in 1850 was born Mihai Eminescu, the Romanian national poet.

3259 FRANCE (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes) - Peasants of Ardeche in 1970's

3259 Joseph, Noemie and Celestin, paysans d'Ardeche in 1970's

Ardèche is a département in south-central France,  named after the River Ardèche. Picturesque, lush and wild, this département is a tapestry of ancient grey rock, verdant hills and thick forests. Heavily loaded with history and tradition, the sparsely populated Ardèche region is the perfect place to lose yourself in the simplest pleasures that rural France can offer, namely hearty regional fare and untamed beauty. The Ardèche is known in France as "chestnut country", and, for many locals, this anonymous wintertime ingredient holds iconic status. This explains its prominence in so many dishes and the region’s position as France’s leading producer.

3258 POLAND (Lesser Poland) - International Postcrossing Meetup, Kraków, January 8, 2018

The first Polish Postcrossing meetup in 2018 occured on 8 January in Kraków, in Kazimierz district, somewhere near Q Hotel Plus, starting 4:30 afternoon. The special postcard issued with this occasion depicts Saint Mary's Basilica (Church of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven) seen from Sukiennice (Kraków Cloth Hall), across the Main Market Square in Kraków. This square is one of the four core areas of Historic Centre of Kraków, an UNESCO World Heritage Site about which I wrote here.

3257 GERMANY (Rhineland-Palatinate) - Landau

3257 Landau - The Market Hall and
the statue of Prince Luitpold in Town Hall Square

Landau, or Landau in der Pfalz, is an autonomous (kreisfrei) town surrounded by the Südliche Weinstraße (Southern Wine Route) district. It is a long-standing cultural centre, and a market and shopping town, surrounded by vineyards and wine-growing villages of the Palatinate wine region. Landau was first mentioned as a settlement in 1106, and was granted a charter in 1274 by King Rudolf I of Germany, who declared the town a Free Imperial Town in 1291.

3256 MYANMAR (Yangon Region) - Karaweik Hall

The Karaweik Hall, also known as Karaweik Palace is one of Yangon's many landmarks. From a distance, it looks like a huge golden barge floating on Kandawgyi Lake, glittering in the sun. The word karaweik comes from Pali karavika, which is a mythical bird with a melodious cry. The barge was designed by Burmese architect U Ngwe Hlaing, who based it on the Pyigyimon royal barge. Construction began in June 1972 and it was finished in October 1974.

3255 FRANCE (Occitania) - The people of Lozère

Located in the region of Occitanie in southern France near the Massif Central, Lozère is the least populated French department, due to its mountainous relief, and to poor soil quality. There is barely any agricultural farming in Lozère, the main activities being cattle farming and tourism. It is one of the few region where the langue d'oc is spoken fluently because it remained an agricultural department, and that people are attached to their roots. And if the Lozériens speak French, it is strongly mixed with Occitan, what some call the patois.

2401, 3243, 3254 UNITED STATES - John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) and Jacqueline Kennedy (1929-1994)

3243 JFK at Cape Cod.

Posted on 24.03.2016, 11.01.2018, 01.02.2018
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy, commonly known as JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, and certainly one of the most important and loved. The Cuban Missile Crisis, The Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the establishment of the Peace Corps, developments in the Space Race, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Civil Rights Movement, and abolition of the federal death penalty in the District of Columbia all took place during his presidency. He also avoided any significant increase in the American presence in Vietnam.

2401 JFK and Jackie... summer of '60
Hyannisport, Massachusetts

JFK was born in Brookline (Massachusetts) on May 29, 1917, as one of the nine children of businessman/politician Joseph Patrick "Joe" Kennedy, Sr. and philanthropist/socialite Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald-Kennedy. Both the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys were wealthy and prominent Irish Catholic Boston families. John F. Kennedy, nicknamed "Jack," was the second oldest of a group of nine extraordinary siblings, who remained close-knit and supportive of each other throughout their entire lives.
 

3254 Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy, New York City, 1960

At school, although he was obviously brilliant - evidenced by the extraordinary thoughtfulness and nuance of his work on the rare occasions when he applied himself - Kennedy remained at best a mediocre student, preferring sports, girls and practical jokes to coursework. He was also chronically ill during his childhood and adolescence; he suffered from severe colds, the flu, scarlet fever and even more severe, undiagnosed diseases that forced him to miss months of school at a time and occasionally brought him to the brink of death.

0549, 2030, 3253 IRELAND (Leinster) - Trinity College - part of The Historic City of Dublin (UNESCO WHS - Tentative List)

2030 Dublin - Trinity College

Posted on 11.03.2013, 13.11.2015, 01.02.2018
Probable that Dublin no longer looks as it was presented in Dubliners by Joyce, but certainly that Trinity College, the sole constituent college of the University of Dublin, hasn't changed much since Beckett studied there, from 1923 to 1927. Founded in 1592 as the "mother" of a new university, and modelled after the collegiate universities of Oxford and of Cambridge, it's one of the seven ancient universities of the British Isles, and was originally intended to consolidate the rule of the Tudor monarchy in Ireland, being seen as the university of the Protestant Ascendancy for much of its history.

0549 Dublin - The Long Room from
Trinity College Library (1)

Although Roman Catholics and Dissenters had been permitted to enter in college since 1793, the professorships, the fellowships and the scholarships were reserved for Protestants until 1873, and the Catholic Church forbade its adherents from attending, without permission of their bishop, until 1970. Its library is the largest research library in Ireland, and a legal deposit library for the UK and Ireland, so it receives a copy of every book published in Great Britain and Ireland, which means 100,000 new items every year. It contains circa five million books, including significant collections of manuscripts, maps, and printed music.

3253 Dublin - The Long Room from Trinity College Library (2)

The Book of Kells, created by Celtic monks ca. 800, is by far its most famous book and is located in the Old Library. As is writes on the postcard, "The main chamber of the Old Library, the Long Room, is nearly 65m in length, and houses around 200,000 of the Library's oldest books. In 1860 the roof was raised to allow the construction of the present barrel-vaulted ceiling and gallery bookcases. Marble busts are placed down either side of the room which also contains the oldest surviving harp in Ireland." It's about the Brian Boru harp, one of the three surviving medieval Gaelic harps, and a national symbol of Ireland (used also on the Irish Euro coins), received by the college in the 18th century.