0218 SEYCHELLES - Beaches and coco de mer

I don't know what thought Vasco da Gama when discovered them in 1502, but certainly he liked them, because otherwise he wouldn't be named them after himself, Ilhas do Almirante, which means Islands of the Admiral. Anyway, neither he nor the English who visited the islands in 1609 haven't taken them in possession. The first who claimed the islands were the French, in 1756, who named them Seychelles (from the Vicomte des Séchelles, Louis XV's finance minister). The colonization began in 1768, when a party of 22 Frenchmen arrived on the islands, bringing with them a number of slaves.

0216 NETHERLANDS (Netherlands / Overijssel) - The locomotive NS 451 from rom Museum Buurt Spoorweg

The little Haaksbergen (24,339 inhabitants), located in the east of the Netherlands, in the province of Overijssel, very close to the German border, has something that only few cities have: a railway museum. Moreover, the Museum Buurt Spoorweg (MBS) maintains a tourist railway link with steam locomotives and other historical rail material between Haaksbergen and Boekelo. Visitors may experience the way of travelling by district trains in the past. The railway line was constructed almost 125 years ago, the station in Haaksbergen was built in 1884, and the historical steam locomotives tell the story of travelling in the early decades of the previous century.

0215 EGYPT - The map of the Two Lands

With an area of about 1,010,000km2 and a population of 81 million people, Egypt is today a major power in Africa and the Mediterranean Basin, as always was. Its map, as old and interesting as Egypt itself, has probably had more changes than that of any other existing country, because Egypt has existed as country longer than any other.

0086, 0213 CHINA (Beijing) - Summer Palace, an Imperial Garden in Beijing (UNESCO WHS)

Posted on 30.12.2011
On how large and populous is China, on so tumultuous and tangled is its history, which almost coincides in duration with human history, starting 780,000 years ago with Peking Man, whose fossils were discovered near of Beijing, its current capital and one of the Seven Ancient Capitals of China. The oldest surviving relics in Beijing date to the Liao Dynasty, which set up a secondary capital on modern Beijing's location in 938, calling it Nanjing (southern capital). In 1125 Emperor Hailingwang of the Jin Dynasty conquered Liao, and moved its capital to Liao's Nanjing in 1153, calling it Zhongdu (central capital). Mongol forces burned Zhongdu to the ground in 1215. 

Kublai Khan began to rebuild the city in 1264, and in 1272 he made it his capital, the city retaining this status throughout the Yuan Dynasty under the name Dadu (great capital - Cambuluc in Marco Polo's accounts), until 1368, when the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty razed the Yuan palaces to the ground and changed the name of the city in Beiping (northern peace). In 1403 the Yongle Emperor renamed the city Beijing (northern capital - Peking in English), and designated it the co-capital, alongside the Nanjing, for that onwards from 1421 to become the "official" capital of the Ming Dynasty, also known as Jingshi. When Dorgon established the Qing Dynasty as the direct successor of the Ming, in 1644, Beijing remained China's capital.

I stop here with history, because one of the Qing Dynasty emperors, namely Qianlong, was the one who commissioned work for what was to become the Summer Palace, the most celebrated imperial garden in China, dominated by Longevity Hill and the Kunming Lake. The Summer Palace started out life as the Garden of Clear Ripples in 1750, and it received the current name, Yihe Yuan, in 1888. Artisans reproduced there the garden architecture styles of various palaces in China, and Kunming Lake was created by extending an existing body of water to imitate the West Lake in Hangzhou. The palace complex suffered two major attacks, during the Anglo-French invasion of 1860 (in the Second Opium War), and during the Boxer Rebellion, in 1900. The garden survived and was rebuilt in 1886 and 1902.

The Long Corridor (Cháng Láng - in the first postcar) was erected in 1750 and it’s famous for its length (728 m) in conjunction with its rich painted decoration (more than 14,000 paintings). A wonderful place to spend an hour a day, every time admiring another painting. It takes many years, and probably none of the emperors hasn't seen it all. Maybe only Empress Dowager Cixi to be done it in those 47 years (1861-1908) in which led de facto China, especially that she loved so much the palace that diverted 30 million taels of silver, designated for the Chinese navy, into the reconstruction and enlargement of it.
 
The corridor, which leads from the east westwards along the northern shore of Kunming Lake, from the Gate for Greeting the Moon (Yao Yue Men) to the foot of the Longevity Hill, was constructed by Qianlong Emperor so that his mother could enjoy a walk through the garden protected from the elements. Along its course, there are four octagonal pavilions with double eaves, two on each side of the Cloud-Dispelling Gate (Pai Yun Men), that marks the center. They symbolize the four seasons and are named (from east to west): Liu Jia (retaining the goodness), Ji Lan (living with the ripples), Qiu Shui (autumn water), and Qing Yao (clear and far). The 14,000 paintings depict episodes from Chinese classical literature, folk tales, historical and legendary figures, and famous Chinese buildings and landscapes along with flowers, birds, fish, and insects.

As a part of the Summer Palace, the Long Corridor was included on the UNESCO World Heritage List in December, 1998, under the name Summer Palace, an Imperial Garden in Beijing. Also has been recorded in 1992 in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest of its kind in the world.

Added on 20.05.2012

Near the western end of the Long Corridor is the Marble Boat (in the second postcard), also known as the Boat of Purity and Ease (Qing Yan Fǎng), a pavilion on the southernmost edge of a peninsula, on the northwestern shore of Kunming Lake. The marble base was built in 1755, during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, and originally had a Chinese style timber suprastructure. This was destroyed in 1860, during the Second Opium War, and rebuilt in 1893, on order of the Empress Dowager Cixi, in the style of a western style Mississippi paddle-steamer with stained glass windows.

0212 SOUTH AFRICA (KwaZulu-Natal) - Two Zulu children

In 1879, at Isandlwana (now in KwaZulu-Natal province, at 169 km north by northwest of Durban), the Zulu warriors led by Ntshingwayo Khoza effectively annihilated the British Army, even managing to stop, for a short time, the British invasion of Zululand. Was the worst defeat of British Army against a technologically inferior indigenous force from its history. The assegai iron spears and cow-hide shields defeated the breech-loading rifle, the artillery, and the rocket battery. More about this battle when I will receive a postcard with Zulu warriors. Now I have only a picture of two descendants of these warriors.

0209 PHILIPPINES (Cordillera Administrative Region) - Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras (UNESCO WHS)

"For 2,000 years, the high rice fields of the Ifugao have followed the contours of the mountains. The fruit of knowledge handed down from one generation to the next, and the expression of sacred traditions and a delicate social balance, they have helped to create a landscape of great beauty that expresses the harmony between humankind and the environment", wrote UNESCO on its official website with reference to the site Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras, inscribed among World Heritage Sites in 1995.

0208 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - The map of Leicestershire

I received this postcard from a Romanian girl / woman named Ana, who I don't know who is. How do I know that is Romanian, since the text is in English? From the way it's written the address, with Dest. (shortening of destinatar - which means recipient) and loc. (localitate - locality), plus the diacritics. There is no doubt: she is Romanian. Mulţumesc Ana, oricine-ai fi.

0207 URUGUAY - A living sculpture for a survivor

A gorgeous postcard, from a country less accessible, with a text carefully constructed, a special stamp and a clear postmark. Could exist for a collector a better beginning of the week? Of course not. And for this I must thank Fernando, one of the best swappers that I have met so far.

So: Uruguay, Punta del Este, Casa Pueblo. About the history of Uruguay (substantially different from that of the other countries in the region, be it about much more extensive Brazil and Argentina or about Paraguay) I will write when I receive a postcard with Colonia del Sacramento. Now I will mention only that Uruguay is home for 3.3 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area, that an estimated 88% of the population are of European ancestry, and that In 2009 Uruguay became the first nation of the world which provided to every school child a free laptop and internet.

0206 GERMANY (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) - Gellen Lighthouse on Hiddensee Island

Hiddensee is a island in the Baltic Sea, the largest in the Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park, located west of Rügen on the German coast. A car-free island. Quite natural, since it has 16.8km long and about 250m wide. I know mansions, even in Romania, with more land around them. But it is very beautiful, so that it was a popular holiday destination for East German tourists during GDR times and even today continues to attract tourists. Perhaps that is why (because it's beautiful, not because attract tourists) was chosen as the eternal resting place by Gerhart Hauptmann (Nobel Prize for Literature in 1912) and Walter Felsenstein (Austrian theater and opera director).

0204 SOUTH KOREA (Seoul) - Taepyeongno by night

The alternate history is a genre of fiction consisting of stories that are set in worlds in which history has diverged from the actual history. An classic exemple is The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, in which the Axis Powers (Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy) have won WWII and have divided the world between them. Whose it seems difficult such literary-historical speculations, only have to look to the Korean Peninsula, where exist in reality an alternative history, because that are something else North Korea and South Korea than two variants of the same country under different regimes. And this postcard from Seoul seems to me representative for economic success and prosperity of South Korea.

0203 TUNISIA (Tunis) - Sidi Bou Said, the town in blue and white

Sidi Bou Said, located about 20km from the capital Tunis, it’s a special town. With a population which slightly exceeding 5000 inhabitants, it got its name for Abou Said ibn Khalef ibn Yahia Ettamini el Beji, a Sufi saint who lived there in 13th century. The town is a tourist attraction, but also has the reputation of a town of artists, being visited by Paul Klee, Gustave-Henri Jossot, August Macke, Saro Lo Turco, Louis Moillet, and more members of Ecole de Tunis.

0202 TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO (Tobago) – Tobago from tobacco or vice versa

I talked here about Trinidad and Tobago flag and about the largest island of this union, respectively Trinidad. Behold that I have now received a postcard also showing the flag, but also the map of the second island in size and importance of this archipelagic state from the southern Caribbean, Tobago, much smaller (approximately 42km long and 10km wide) and bearing a name derived, it seems, from the word tobacco. Or vice versa. Located in the northeast of Trinidad and southeast of Grenada, Tobago lies outside the hurricane belt. But not all the hurricanes respect the rule established by meteorologists, so that the consequences of Hurricane Flora on September 30, 1963, were so drastic, that they changed the island's economy.

The first European visitor was Cristopher Columbus on his third voyage (1498), but the first settlers were Courlanders in 1654. It changed hands 33 times between Courland, Spain, England, France, Sweden, and the Dutch Republic until in 1814 it became part of the British Empire. In 1889 Tobago was united with Trinidad into a British crown colony. In 1962 they became an independent Commonwealth nation of Trinidad and Tobago, in 1976 a republic. The capital is Scarborough, with a population around 17,000, almost one-third of the population of the island, composed mainly of African descent, although with a growing proportion of Trinidadians of East Indian descent and Europeans.

The stamp is the same as the one from the first postcard, but still I can't say anything about it.


sender: Nalini Mohammed (direct swap)
sent from San Fernando (Trinidad and Tobago), on 26.03.2012

0201 PHILIPPINES (Ilocos Region) - Historic Town of Vigan (UNESCO WHS)

The City of Vigan is located in the delta of the Abra River, off the coastal plain of the South China Sea, close to the north-east tip of the large island of Luzon. Before the arrival of the Spanish, Isla de Vigan (Island of Vigan) was a small coastal trading post, consists of wooden or bamboo houses on stilts. In 1572 the conquistador Juan de Salcedo founded a new town on this site, which he named Villa Fernandina de Vigan (in honor of King Philip II’s son, Prince Ferdinand, who died at the age of four) and made it his capital when he was appointed "Justicia Mayor de esta Provincia de Ylocos" (Province Mayor of Ilocos). In 1576, Salcedo returned to the capital, bringing with him some soldiers, and Augustinian missionaries to Christianize the region.

0200 RUSSIA (Moscow) – "With greetings from the past"

This is the first Soviet postcard received by me. Yes, Soviet, because it was issued in 1981, so with a year before Brezhnev's death. I have a lot of postcards from that period (uncirculated, purchased recently from the flea market in Ploiesti, some of them very beautiful, that I will provide for swap), but I not received any. Many thanks, Egor, for this premiere.

On the back is wrote "USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements Industry Square". Named in nowadays All-Russia Exhibition Centre, it’s a permanent general-purpose trade show in Moscow which was established in 1935 as the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (VSKhV), renamed in 1959 Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy.

So in 1935 an existing site (then known as Ostankino Park) was approved for the exhibition, and in the next year was approved the master plan by Vyacheslav Oltarzhevsky, but the first show began barely in 1939, after several delays. Meanwhile the architect was arrested, because the exhibition didn’t suit with "the ideological direction of the moment", and was "too modest and too temporary". After WWII delays continued, the complex being reopened only in 1954. Until 1989 the exhibition had 82 pavilions with the exhibition area of 700,000 m2. Each pavilion was dedicated to a particular field: the Engineering Pavilion (1954), the Space Pavilion (1966), the Atomic Energy Pavilion (1954), the People's Education Pavilion (1954), the Radioelectronics Pavilion (1958), the Soviet Culture Pavilion (1964). In image is, of course, the Space Pavilion.

The aircraft is a Yak-42 (NATO reporting name Clobber), CCCP-42304, a three-engined mid-range passenger jet, a new model at that time, a T-tail with both the vertical fin and the horizontal surfaces swept. It performed the first flight in 1975, was introduced in 1980, and was built between 1980 and 2003 in 178 copies. It was the first airliner produced in the Soviet Union to be powered by modern high-bypass turbofan engines. Two engines were mounted in pods on either side of the rear fuselage, with the third embedded inside the rear fuselage.

Above it's mounted a Soyuz (Union) rocket, a expendable launch systems developed by OKB-1, and manufactured by TsSKB-Progress in Samara, Russia. The Soyuz vehicles, used as the launcher for the manned Soyuz spacecraft as part of the Soyuz program, is the most used and reliable launch vehicle in the history of spaceflight. By the dawn of the 21st century, more than 1,600 Soyuz rockets of various kinds had been launched with an unparalled success rate of 97.5% for production models. It can lift up to 7,500 kg into low Earth orbit and has been used to launch a wide variety of scientific and military satellites.

Both aircraft and rocket are even now in the exhibition, but not in the same position, the rocket being placed vertically, next to the aircraft.

The stamp depict Ryazan Kremlin (25R) and is part of the series Russian Kremlins, about which I wrote here.


sender: Egor Ivanov / Egorivanov (postcrossing)
sent from Moskow (Russia), on 07.04.2012
photo: V. Davydova

0198 CZECH REPUBLIC (Prague) - Dancing House

In Prague, on the corner of the embankment Rasinovo nabrezi and the street Resslova, was until WWII a house in the Neo-renaissance style, erected to the end of the 19th century. Destroyed by US Army Air Force during the raid of February 14, 1945, its remains was finally removed in 1960. The neighboring house was co-owned by Czech ex-president Vaclav Havel, who lived there from his childhood until the mid-1990s. Hoping that the building would become a center of cultural activity, he ordered the first architectural study from Zagreb-born but Prague-based architect Vlado Milunic (who has been involved in re-building Havel's appartment). Afterwards the Dutch bank ING (previously called Nationale Nederland) agreed to build a house there, and asked Milunic to invite a world-renowned architect to approach the process.

0197 BELARUS (Vitebsk) - The cathedral of Saint Anthony of Padua

0197 The cathedral of Saint Anthony of Padua

Pastavy is located on the bank of the river Myadelka, 250km away from Vitebsk, on the railway which connect this city and Vilnius. Initially the settlement was called Posadnik, and in 996 it was owned by Danut Zenovich. The name of the town was changed in 1409 by Lithuanian Prince Vitovt. The town is connected with the noble family of the Tizengauzs, in particular the famous elightener Antony Tizengauz who built here a number of dwelling homes and 35 factories that used to make stamp paper, carpets, canvasses, hats, belts and even stagecoaches.

0195 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - The Royal Pavilion in Brighton

The Royal Pavilion is a former royal residence located in Brighton, a fishing village from the south coast of Great Britain, which became almost overnight a health resort in the late of 18th century. Advised by his physician to advantage of the benefits of seawater, the Prince of Wales, who later became the extravagant King George IV, move the pavilion from the Royal Court in London to Brighton in 1786, transforming it into a discreet location where to enjoy the liaisons with his mistress, Maria Fitzherbert.

0194 TAIWAN - A Saisiyat man smoking pipe

The 521.000 Taiwanese aborigines constitutes now only 2% of the island population, although they were the first who colonized it, with a few thousand years before that benshengren (literally "home-province person") come from the mainland. These natives Taiwanese, divided into 14 major groups, are Austronesians, with linguistic and genetic ties to peoples of the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Madagascar, Polynesia, and Oceania. Moreover, historical linguists consider Taiwan the original homeland of the Austronesian language family. The issue of an ethnic identity unconnected to the mainland has become a thread in the discourse regarding the political status of Taiwan.

0193 SWITZERLAND (Ticino) - Madonna del Sasso church and Lago Maggiore

"When, by chance, you have a heart and a shirt, you have to sell the shirt to see the surroundings of Lake Maggiore..." wrote Stendhal in a letter to his sister, Pauline, in 1811. Lago Maggiore (literally Great Lake, but named in english Lake Maggiore), about 65km long, with a width between 1 to 4km, situated at 194m above sea level, and with a maximum depth of 372m, is located on the south side of the Alps, its shores covering a total lenght of 150km from Canton Ticino in Switzerland to Sesto Calende in Italy (Lombardy).

0192 AUSTRALIA (Western Australia) - Transperth B-series trains in Perth

After the historic trams in Adelaide and Melbourne, is the turn of the electric train in Perth (how modern is possible) to be in the spotlight. Perth is the capital and largest city of Western Australia, and its metropolitan area has an estimated population of 1.74 million. Perth metropolitan public transport, including the trains, are provided by Transperth, with links to rural areas provided by Transwa. There are 6 main rail lines with 70 stations in the metropolitan area, on which traveling daily around 360,000 passenger.