3459 SLOVENIA (Slovene Littoral) - The Piran salt pans

3459 A salt-pan family in a traditional house in Piran
during salt harvesting in summer.

Piran, considered by some the most beautiful town on the Slovenian coast, grew with the help of salt. The salt pans, where the world-class fleur de sel (flower of salt) is still produced today using age-old methods, were the reason why the picturesque Mediterranean walled town flourished. Established in 804, the Piran Salt Pans encompassed the salt pans in the area of today’s marina (Lucija, Portorož), the smaller Strunjan Salt Pans, and the larger Sečovlje Salt Pans. The areas of all the preserved salt pans are now landscape parks.

3442 ROMANIA (Maramureş) - Life in the countryside

In recent years, I have met more and more people, both in social networks and in reality, who claim to envy those living in the country, in the bosom of nature. For the overwhelming majority of them, this is either hypocrisy or simply a lie, because I am convinced that lacking the comfort of the city would leave life in the countryside in a few days. In these isolated villages, where the water does not come from the tap and the heat from a button, where autumn you swim in the mud and winter in the snow, where you have to grow vegetables and animals if you want to eat, life is not at all bucolic.

3438 SLOVENIA (Slovene Littoral) - Village market in Padna

The Istrian hinterland has always been very important to supply fresh and high quality food for all coastal towns. The small village Padna, located not far for Piran, and first mentioned in sources dating to 1186, has been doing this for hundreds of years. The village is surrounded by olive groves where some trees are more than 300 years old. It has been known for its large quantities of olive oil products for a long time.

3429 ROMANIA - The Dacians

The Dacians were a Thracian people who were the ancient inhabitants of the cultural region of Dacia, located in the area near the Carpathian Mountains and west of the Black Sea. In the absence of historical records written by the Dacians (and Thracians) themselves, analysis of their origins depends largely on the remains of material culture. From roughly 500 BC, the Dacians developed a distinct civilization, which was capable of supporting large centralised kingdoms by 1st BC and 1st AD.

3426 SLOVENIA (Slovene Littoral) - They were known as Šavrinke

Slovenian Istria is known for its spectacularly beautiful landscape - a countryside characterized by harsh, rocky terrain. The poor soil of the region, however, has often made it difficult for its inhabitants to make a living. For decades, beginning in the 19th century, courageous local women traveled throughout Istria and beyond selling fresh produce, eggs, freshly baked bread, and other goods from their farms. They were known as Šavrinke, after the local Šavrin Hills.

3422 BULGARIA - Old winemaking

Grape growing and wine production have a long history in Bulgaria, dating back to the times of the Thracians, who used wine not only as a drink on the table but channel between people and gods. It was a divine drink. Zagreus, somehow the Thracian analog of the Greek god Dionysus, was worshiped by the Thracians as the god of wine and merriment. Unfortunately, the tradition was interrupted for 500 years, how long this region was part of the Ottoman Empire, a state dedicated to expanding the world of Islam.

3418 SLOVENIA (Slovene Littoral) - Persimmons harvesting in Strunjan

Strunjan is a coastal town in the Municipality of Piran, situated between Piran and Izola, in the valley of the river Roja, along the saltpans and in the nearby hills. The favourable natural conditions of the peninsula of Strunjan, especially the sea climate and its leeward position, made it possible for man to settle here and develop traditional economic activities in harmony with nature. The local population cultivates grapes, produces wine, grows fruit and early vegetables.

3414 SLOVENIA (Slovene Littoral) - Harvesting the smoke bush leaves in Piran

The European smoketree (Cotinus coggygria), also known as smoke bush, Venetian sumach, or dyer's sumach is a species of flowering plant in the family Anacardiaceae, native to a large area from southern Europe, east across central Asia and the Himalayas to northern China. The wood was formerly used to make the yellow dye called young fustic. From the Middle Ages onwards, the heartwood and leafy branches of smoke bush were widely used in Europe, especially Italy, for dyeing silk & wool (young fustic), often in combination with other yellows, such as weld, as the yellow shade from young fustic tends to have a reddish hue.

3406 SLOVENIA (Slovene Littoral) - Preparations for Easter in Piran

The Palm Sunday is a christian feast that falls on the Sunday before Easter, and commemorates Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. In most liturgical churches it is celebrated by the blessing and distribution of palm branches or the branches of other native trees representing the palm branches the crowd scattered in front of Christ as he rode into Jerusalem. In Istria the traditional palm weaving become a popular festive decoration. Painting Easter eggs is also also a tradition spread in many European country and not only.

3401 SLOVENIA (Slovene Littoral) - The repairing of the wooden boats in the škver of Seča

 

In Seča (former Sveti Jernej - the Slovene name of Saint Bartholomew), a settlement not far from Piran,  at the end of Jernej's channel, the wooden boats are still renovated in škver. A škver (from Italian squero) is a small craft workshop or shipyard for the production, renovation and maintenance of exclusively small wooden vessels (up to 25 meters), in the traditional, manual manner. Škver was also named the most important accessory in the construction of each new wooden boat, a strong, flat beam rigidly fixed to the floor, which served as the base for the keel on which the entire boat was then built.

3399 FRANCE (Bourgogne-Franche-Comté) - The Bread of the Earth

This postcard depict the cover of the book The Bread of the Earth - The Mountain People Tell, by Anne-Marie Prodon, published by Cabédita Publishing House on December 22, 1998. In 25 chapters, 35 peasants and mountain people recount their lives in the first half of the 20th century, in their villages of the Franco-Swiss Jura. Men and women of the earth, attached to their living environment and their heritage, they conducted the same struggle to find the basic necessities for their existence in this arid county subject to the strong winds from the north. Through both funny and tragic anecdotes, they bear witness to a harsh and healthy life that made them robust, tenacious, determined and ingenious to face everyday realities.

3395 SLOVENIA (Slovene Littoral) - The preparation of healing plants in Piran

The use of herbal medicine is widespread in Slovenia, and on visits to rural areas you’ll often encounter drying rooms or tables covered with leaves and flowers, the specimens gathered from gardens or the wild, to be later stored in jars and turned into teas for various ailments or left to soak in alcohol for a certain pick-me-up. Information on the use of medicinal plants in Istria isn't available in the literature, but collection of plants is still an important and widespread practice in this region. "There is a healing flower for every illness", say the people, and who has had in the family elders from the country side knows this.

3392 NETHERLANDS (Netherlands / North Holland) - The Bulldog Coffeeshop in Amsterdam

The story of The Bulldog starts in 1975, when Henk de Vries, who had started selling marijuana in 1970 at the Kralingen Music Festival, converted his father's sex shop in Amsterdam's red-light district into a coffeeshop, the first in the way we know nowadays. Henk asked ex-pat Australian artist Harold Thornton to paint some signage on the front of the 1st Bulldog Coffeeshop Nr. 90 but Harold turned this exercise into a mural that goes across the front of the whole shop. The mural helped the coffeeshop become a magnet for backpackers and tourists and its reputation grew. The company logo was inspired by Henk's dog at that time, a bulldog named Joris.

3386 SLOVENIA (Slovene Littoral) - The weaving of traditional Istrian baskets in Piran

Basket weaving is one of the widest spread crafts in the history of any human civilization. It is hard to say just how old the craft is because natural materials like wood, grass, and animal remains decay naturally and constantly. So without proper preservation, much of the history of basket making has been lost and is simply speculated upon. Anyway, the technique of weaving has been passed along, re-discovered, and expanded upon throughout the years, and is still being expanded upon today.

3382 CZECH REPUBLIC (Ústí nad Labem) - Drinking beer in Žatec

Žatec is famous for an over-700-year-long tradition of growing Saaz noble hops used by several breweries, produces its own beer and hosts Dočesná, its (hops related) harvest festival every year on the town square. As a result, what can be more natural than drinking beer in this town.

3330, 3349, 3373 SLOVENIA (Slovene Littoral) - The olive harvesting and manufacture of extra virgin olive oil in Piran

3330 The olive harvesting (1)

Posted on 03.01.2020, 11.01.2020, 19.01.2020
Native to the Mediterranean Basin, the olive tree is one of the oldest and more important domesticated crops raised by humans, and it seems that the olives were turned into oil since 6000 BC. Even today, after thousands of years, the olive oil is an important cooking oil in countries surrounding the Mediterranean, and it forms one of the three staple food plants of Mediterranean cuisine, along with wheat and the grape.

3349 The olive harvesting (2)

A blend of sun and sea breeze, along with the microclimate of the salt pans add a distinctly bitter and spicy flavour to the olives grown in Istria Peninsula, in the area between the Adriatic Sea and the Karst Rim, therefore also in Piran. As a result, the extra virgin olive oil from Slovenian Istria has a protected indication of origin, and the region was proclaimed the best olive oil region in the world in 2016 and 2017. The olive harvesting season extends from October to November. Carefully picked olives make their way to torklje, a special oil press from which oil flows.

3373 Manufacture by cold pressing, in the manual torklja press,
of extra virgin olive oil

 

1023, 3358 POLAND (Greater Poland) - Traditional Bamberka costume

1023

Posted on 06.03.2014, 15.01.2020
Located on the Warta river, Poznań was an important cultural and political centre with centuries before the Christianization of Poland, becoming later the capital of Wielkopolska (Greater Poland), and, for a short time, even the capital of the kingdom. After a long time of prosperity, in the 17th and 18th centuries the city was severely affected by a series of wars, plagues and floods, which practically depopulated it. Following, in area were brought, in several waves, Dutch and Bambergian settlers, exclusively Catholics, as ordered in 1710 August II the Strong, Elector of Saxony, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.

3358

 

The polonisation of the latter ones, subsequently named Bambrzy, was a voluntary act and happened very quickly. In the late 19th century, the meaning of the word Bamber (singular form) became wider, designating all the people living in those villages, regardless of their ethnic or cultural background. Of course that the settlers had their own folk costume, quite modest, but in the second half of the 19th century this was changed into a rich impressive outfit full of decorative pieces. So it must be emphasized that the folk dress of the descendants of these immigrants it wasn't brought by them from Bamberg, but was developed here. It should be also noted that it is about women's dress, the men adopting quickly the typical clothes of the locals.

3356 ROMANIA (Bucharest) - Postcrossing Meetup, Bucharest, 1 December 2018

3356 The twelfth postcard of the series
"100 years since the Great Union of Romania" (12/12)
- the Michael the Brave 30th Guards Brigade
on National Day parade

The previous postcard of the series "100 years since the Great Union of Romania" (11/12)

The last meeting of the Romanian postcrossers in the year of the Centenary of the Great Union took place on Bucharest, of course on December 1, the National Holiday of Romania. Mihnea Răducu chose for these 12th postcard an image from the parade that took place with this occasion, featuring the Michael the Brave 30th Guards Brigade. This unit is a primarily ceremonial, as well as combat unit of the Romanian Land Forces, and was established on 1 July 1860 through a decree issued by Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza as the 1st Honor Guard battalion of Tirailleurs, which ensured the security of Royal palaces.

3291, 3299, 3338 GREECE - Authentic Greece (Georges Meis Collection)

3338

 

Posted 13.12.2019, 23.12.2019, 07.01.2020
George Meis studied photography – cinematography in Paris, and then worked as a photographer in the fashion world for five years, during which time he created Meis Studio. The publishing world next claimed his interest, and he published a series of postcards, which presented a different view of subjects and landscapes. His subjects, taken from both mainland and island Greece, evoked international interest and were published in poster size.

3291

The old man in the postcard 3291 wears vraka (a sort of baggy trousers or breeches popular mostly at the islands and the costal part of Greece), and handmade leather shoes called trohadia, which look like sandals.

3299

3321 SLOVENIA (Slovene Littoral) - Morra players in Piran

Morra is a hand game that dates back thousands of years to ancient Roman and Greek times. Each player simultaneously reveals their hand, extending any number of fingers, and calls out a number. Any player who successfully guesses the total number of fingers revealed by all players combined scores a point. Morra can be played to decide issues, much as two people might toss a coin, or for entertainment.