0970 BELARUS (Minsk City) - Trinity Suburb

0970 Trinity Suburb in Minsk City

Located on left bank of the Svisloch River, on the Trinity Hill, Minsk's old town, more commonly known as Troitskoe Predmestye (Trinity Suburb) after the former Trinity Church that once stood in the area, is a slight misnomer in that it dates from just three decades ago. Built between 1982 and 1985 on the site of a former settlement dating from the 12th century, Trinity offer a break from the sprawling concrete and the Stalinist architecture of the city's centre, rebuilt (not restored) after WWII, when Minsk was destroyed in proportion of 80%.

0969 CZECH REPUBLIC (Central Bohemia) - Kutná Hora: Historical Town Centre with the Church of St Barbara and the Cathedral of Our Lady at Sedlec (UNESCO WHS)

The town of Kutná Hora began in 1142 with the settlement of the first Cistercian monastery in Bohemia, Sedlec Monastery, on whose property German miners began to mine for silver in 13th century. The town developed with great rapidity, so that between the 13th and 16th centuries it competed with Prague economically, culturally and politically. Along with the rest of Bohemia, Kuttenberg (Kutná Hora) passed to the Habsburg Monarchy of Austria in 1526. The flooding of the richest mine, the loss of privileges, the plague and the horrors of the Thirty Years' War led to the ruin of the city. The mines were abandoned at the end of the 18th century. Bohemia was a crownland of the Austrian Empire in 1806, in the Austrian monarchy after the compromise of 1867, and part of Czechoslovakia after WWI. Since 1995 the city center has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

0968 UNITED STATES (Kentucky) - Fort Knox

Fort Knox is a U.S. Army post which occupy an area of ​441 km.sq and currently holds the Army human resources Center of Excellence, being also one of only three Army posts (along with Fort Campbell, Kentucky and Fort Sam Houston, Texas) that still have a high school located on-post. It was the home, for nearly seventy years (1940-2010), of the U.S. Army Armor Center, and the U.S. Army Armor School (now at Fort Benning), being used by both the Army and the Marine Corps to train crews on the M1 Abrams main battle tank. Fortifications were erected near the site in 1861 (Fort Duffield), but the construction for a permanent training center was started only in July 1918, the new camp being named after Henry Knox, the Continental Army's chief of artillery during the Revolutionary War and the country's first Secretary of War. Here is also the General George Patton Museum.

0967 BELARUS (Mogilev) - Saint Nicholas Monastery

0967 Saint Nicholas Monastery in Mogilev

Located in eastern Belarus, at about 76km from the border with Russia's Smolensk Oblast and 105km from the border with Russia's Bryansk Oblast, Mogilev (also spelled Mahilyow) is a city with a long history, documentary attested since 1267. From the 14th century was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then, since 1569, part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 16th-17th centuries the city flourished as one of the main nodes of the east-west and north-south trading routes. In 1577 Polish King Stefan Batory granted it with city rights under Magdeburg law.

0966 RUSSIA (Krasnoyarsk Krai) - Putorana Plateau (UNESCO WHS)

The Putorana Plateau is a high-lying basalt plateau, a mountainous area at the northwestern edge of the Central Siberian Plateau, to the south from Taymyr Peninsula. It is composed of Siberian Traps, which form a large region of volcanic rock, and the highest mountain in the range is Mount Kamen (1,700m). To protect the world's largest herd of reindeer as well as snow sheep, in 1988 was established the Putorana Nature Reserve (situated about 100 km north of the Arctic Circle), which was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2010, as "a complete set of subarctic and arctic ecosystems in an isolated mountain range, including pristine taiga, forest tundra, tundra and arctic desert systems, as well as untouched cold-water lake and river systems".

0965 CHINA (Shaanxi) - Inside the Yellow Earth

In China, the Yellow Earth usually refers to the Loess Plateau (also known as the Huangtu Plateau), located in the country's northern part, on the upper and middle reaches of Yellow River (which in fact took its name even at the Yellow Earth), extending northeast to southwest for more than 1,000km, and having several hundred kilometers wide. More specifically, the Loess Plateau and its dusty soil cover almost all of Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces, as well as parts of Gansu province, the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, being a transition zone to the steppes and desert regions of Inner Mongolia.

0962 VIETNAM (Mekong Delta) - An Thoi fishing village in Phú Quốc island

Located in the Gulf of Thailand, just 12km south of the (now) Cambodian coast, the mountainous and densely forested island Phú Quốc (known as Koh Trol in Khmer) now belongs to Vietnam, but was and is a bone of contention between the governments of Cambodia and Vietnam. In the early 17th century, it was a desolate area, where Vietnamese and Chinese immigrants earned their living from sea cucumbers. In 1869, the French occupied it to set up rubber and coconut plantations. Anyway, in the late 19th and early 20th century less than 1,000 people resided on island, mostly distributed among small fishing communities, and even at the end of WWII the population was still less than 5,000. In 1949, after China fell under the control of the Communist Party, more then 33,000 Republic of China Army soldiers came in Phú Quốc, but they went to Taiwan in 1953. During the Vietnam War, the island housed South Vietnam's largest prisoner camp (40,000 in 1973).

0961 GERMANY (Hesse) - Express locomotive 01 523 in 1965 in Bebra station

The DR Class 01.5 was the designation given by the Deutsche Reichsbahn in East Germany to express train locomotives that were reconstructed from DRG Class 01, the first standardised (Einheitsdampflokomotive) steam express passenger locomotives built by the unified German railway system. They were of 4-6-2 wheel arrangement in the Whyte notation, or 2′C1′ h2 in the UIC classification, almost globally known as Pacific type. The firms of AEG and Borsig, together with Henschel, Hohenzollern, Krupp and BMAG previously Schwartzkopff, delivered a total of 231 of these locomotives between 1926 and 1938,  the one from the postcard,  No. 01 191, being built in 1937.

0959, 0960 SPAIN (Andalusia) - Cathedral, Alcázar and General Archive of the Indies in Seville (UNESCO WHS)

0959 Seville - Aerial view of the Cathedral
and The General Archive of the Indies

Situated in the fertile valley of the Guadalquivir, on the both banks of the river, Seville is approximately 2,200 years old, and the passage of the various civilisations has left it with a distinct personality. The mythological founder of the city is Hercules, but in reality was founded as the Roman city of Hispalis. Conquered by the Vandals and the Visigoths during the 5th and 6th centuries, in 712 it reached into the hands of the Moors, who have named it Ishbiliya.

0960 Seville - The Gold Tower and the Giralda

After more than five centuries of Muslim rule, in 1248 Ferdinand III incorporated it into the Christian Kingdom of Castile. The discovery of the Americas transformed it in one of the economic centres of the Spanish Empire, as its port monopolised the trans-oceanic trade. Coinciding with the Baroque period, the 17th century represented the most brilliant flowering of the city's culture, but then began a gradual economic and demographic decline. Its Old Town, very well preserved, is the third largest in Europe. Cathedral, Alcázar and General Archive of the Indies form a remarkable monumental complex in the heart of the city.

0958 AUSTRALIA (Western Australia) - Drosera lowriei

As is well known, Australia is full of endemic species of plants and animals, because of the continent's long geographic isolation, tectonic stability, and the effects of an unusual pattern of climate change. One of these species of plants is Drosera lowriei (in the maxicard), formally described for the first time by N. G. Marchant in 1992, and named in honour of Allen Lowrie. Is a perennial tuberous species, endemic to Western Australia, and grows in a rosette about 3-4 cm in diameter (typical form) or 5-7 cm (giant form), in loam soils in wet zones near granite outcrops.

0956 BRAZIL (Mato Grosso) - The female ritual of Yamurikumã

When the Portuguese arrived in South America in the 16th century, Brazil was inhabited by an estimated 2.4 million Amerindians, of more than 2,000 nations and tribes. Massacres, slavery and diseases brought by the Europeans have drastically reduced their number, so that today of the 200 million Brazilians, only about 817.000 classified themselves as indigenous (0.4%). Among these are the Xingu peoples, who live near the river with the same name, a tributary of the Amazon River. The Upper Xingu was heavily populated prior to European contact, but in 1950s only about 500 Xingu peoples were alive. The Villas-Bôas brothers visited the area beginning in 1946 and pushed for creating the Xingu National Park, which was established in 1961. The number of Xingu living here in 32 settlements has risen again to today over 3000 inhabitants, half of them younger than 15 years.

0953 MALTA - Marsaxlokk and its Luzzu

Marsaxlokk is a picturesque fishing village located in the south-eastern part of Malta, with a population of 3,277 people. Its name comes from marsa (port) and xlokk, the local name for south east. The word is related to the name for the dry sirocco wind that blows from the Sahara. The Phoenicians landed here and set up trading posts during the 9th century BC, but evidence of habitation of the area are much older. The hill of Tas-Silġ, which overlook the northern arm of Marsaxlokk Bay, contains remains of megalithic temples, but also the remains of its use as a religious site, from the end of the 6th century BC to the 1st century AD, and also of the 4th century AD, when it was adapted to the new religion, Christianity.

0950-0952 UKRAINE (Volyn Oblast) - Lubart's Castle in Lutsk

According to the legend, Lutsk, located on the Styr River, now in northwestern Ukraine, was founded in the 7th century, but first documentary attestation dates from 1085. In 1321, the Lithuanians conquered the town, and had kept it for a century. Liubartas (Lubart), son of Gediminas the Great, erected the castle which will bear his name. The current castle was built mostly in the 1340s, being fortified to guard against artillery and gunfire during the reign of Vytautas the Great. The principal entrance, now bricked in, was from the west and adjoined a bridge over outer moat.

The castle repelled sieges by numerous potentates, including Casimir the Great (1349), Jogaila (1431), and Sigismund Kęstutaitis (1436). Its walls formerly enclosed St. John's Cathedral, the residence of the Grand Duke of Lithuania, and an episcopal palace. Of these buildings, only the Neoclassical palace of the bishops still stands. In castle took place in 1429 a conference of monarchs, having as subject the Tartar threat. In total more than 15,000 guests came to this congress, while the population of Lutsk itself was only about 5,000 residents.

In 1432 Volhynia became a fief of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and Lutsk became the seat of the governors, and later the Marshalls of Volhynia. In the same year, the city was granted Magdeburg rights, so it continued to prosper for a while, but during the Khmelnytskyi Uprising was looted and the population was slaughtered or fled. The town never fully recovered after that. Besides, in 1781 and 1845 was struck by devastating fires, and in 1795 was annexed by the Russia.

0949 CHINA (Sichuan) - A teahouse in Chengdu

A teahouse is an establishment which primarily serves tea and other light refreshments, and, even if its function varies widely depending on the culture, it often serves also as center of social interaction. In China, a teahouse is traditionally similar to the American cafe. People gather at teahouses to chat, socialize, and enjoy tea, and young people often meet at teahouses for dates. Tea culture in China differs from that of Europe, Britain or Japan in such things as preparation methods, tasting methods and the occasions for which it is consumed. Even now, in both casual and formal Chinese occasions, tea is consumed regularly.

0948 MAURITIUS - Wild and free

Not long ago I was the lucky winner of a lottery, and this wonderful postcard is the prize. A reason for joy, of course, to which is added the fact that it is a limited edition, that comes from Mauritius and, not least, that was made and sent by my pals Samuel and Vivi, whose works you can find here. It is however, also a cause for nostalgia, because I was (once upon a time) wild and free, like this bird, and now I became domestic and constraint, like a turkey. So it goes.

0920, 0932, 0947 UNITED STATES (Arizona) - Sonoran Desert

Posted on 27.12.2013, 31.12.2013, and 07.01.2014
The Sonoran Desert, one of the largest and hottest deserts in North America, covers large parts of the Southwestern United States and of Northwestern Mexico. It includes 60 mammal species, 350 bird species, 20 amphibian species, over 100 reptile species, 30 native fish species, over 1000 native bee species, and more than 2000 native plant species, among which are some endemic. Many plants not only survive, but thrive in the harsh conditions of the Sonoran Desert. It is the only place in the world where the famous saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea - in the first postcard) grows in the wild. Cholla (Cylindropuntia spp. - in the first postcard), beavertail (Opuntia basilaris - in the third postcard), hedgehog (Echinocereus spp.), fishhook (Ferocactus wislizeni), prickly pear (Opuntia spp.), nightblooming cereus (Peniocereus spp.), and organ pipe (Stenocereus thurberi - in the second postcard) are other taxa of cacti found here.

The saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) is an arborescent cactus species which can grow to be over 20m tall. It is native to the Sonoran Desert, the Whipple Mountains and Imperial County areas of California. Native birds live inside holes in saguaros. Its blossom is the State Wildflower of Arizona. Cholla (Cylindropuntia spp).are native to northern Mexico and the Southwestern United States, and are known for their barbed spines that tenaciously attach to skin, fur, and clothing. The organ pipe cactus (Stenocereus thurberi) is found in rocky desert, and is susceptible to frost damage which kills the tips of the branches. It can reach a height of 7m. Beavertail cactus (Opuntia basilaris) is a medium-sized to small prickly pear cactus, growing to about 60 cm tall, found in southwest United States. The pink to rose colored flowers are most common; however, a rare variety of white and even yellow flowers also exist. It bloom from spring to early summer.

0946 POLAND (Silesia) - The main railway station of Bielsko-Biała

Formed in 1951 by the union of two former cities on opposite banks of the Biała River, Silesian Bielsko and Lesser Poland's Biała, Bielsko-Biała is a beautiful city, which has a vibrant modernistic presence being a student-city with its associated nightlife, as well as having numerous historical sights. One of this is the main railway station (Bielsko-Biała Główna), located in the city center.

0945 AUSTRALIA (Victoria) - Puffing Billy Railway

The Puffing Billy Railway is a narrow gauge railway (762 mm) located near Melbourne,  which runs through the southern foothills of the Dandenong Ranges to Gembrook. It was originally one of five narrow gauge lines of the Victorian Railways opened in 1900, closed in 1954, reopened in 1955, closed again in 1958, and reopened from 1962, in stages, now being kept in operation through the efforts of volunteers. Being close to Melbourne, the line is one of the most popular steam heritage railways in the world. Operations are centred on Belgrave, which houses the main offices of the railway.

0944 RUSSIA (Republic of Buryatia) - Ivolginsky datsan

In Buryatia, a republic located in the south-central region of Siberia, along the eastern shore of Lake Baikal, ethnic Russians make up two thirds of the population in nowadays, while the ethnic Buryats are 30%. Because many Slavs are Russian Orthodox, and most urban Buryats are either Buddhist or Orthodox, these two are the most widespread religions in the republic. The historical evidences give reason to believe that, from the 2nd century BCE, proto-Mongol peoples were familiar with Buddhism. Anyway, at the beginning of the 17th century, Tibetan Buddhism penetrated from Mongolia to reach the Buryat population of the area just east of Lake Baikal, and over a century it spread throughout the region. A second branch came directly from Tibet, from the Labrang Monastery in Amdo, so the Buddhism in Buryatia is the northernmost extension of Mahayana Buddhism in Central Asia, primarily the Gelug tradition from Tibet.

0942 PHILIPPINES (Northern Mindanao) - A Talaandig solemn ritual

 

Mindanao is the most culturally diverse island in the Philippines where people of different languages, tribes and races meet. The native Maguindanaon, Moro or Lumad groups have a culture that is different from the main culture of the Philippines. There are 17 ethnolinguistic groups Lumad (shortening for Katawhang Lumad, which in Cebuano literally means "indigenous peoples"), which at the beginning of the 20th century controlled an area covering now 17 of Mindanao’s 24 provinces, but by the 1980 census they constituted less than 6% of the population of Mindanao and Sulu. Katawhang Lumad are the un-Islamized and un-Christianized Austronesian peoples of Mindanao (about 20 general hilltribes). One of this tribes is the Talaandig, estimated to comprise about 100,000 people or more, who live in the province of Bukidnon, around the mountain of Kitanglad, their sacred "temple" and ancestral home. They have continued to preserve and promote its customs, beliefs and practices, despite the strong influx of modernization.