United Kingdom

GB-627530

1952-1992 Fortieth Anniversary of the Accession

This is an awesome card.  

First, it is a card of Queen Elizabeth II.  

Second, it appears to be from 1992, which meant that this card was 23 years old by the time I got it in 2015.

Thirdly, it is a Maxicard.  Maxicards are postcards with a stamp of the same image as the card (or a related image) and cancellation.  The stamp here on this card was canceled on the first day of issue, February 6, 1992 in Truro, Cornwall.  

The sender had purchased a bunch of unused postcards at a charity shop and saw that I like royalty cards and sent it to me!  What a great find!

Germany

DE-3934784

A little black piglet walking in a field of grass!

Belarus

BY-1531649

Fauna of Belarus

This card of a wolf is the first card I've ever received in the postcard collection known as "The Fauna of Belarus"!  

Germany

DE-3978246

This image of a car with the distincitive bee-hive hairstyle with a flower by the late musical artist Amy Winehouse (14 September 1983 – 23 July 2011) actually made me chuckle when I got it.  The card.  The photo is part of a project called Pets Rock and can be found at www.takkoda.com.

China

CN-1551713

Thies beautiful card from China is, according to the user, about one of the twenty-four solar terms.

Germany

DE-4031621

Ostfriesische Inseln

East Frisian Islands

Taiwan

TW-1515788

Thie card of a collection of wine corks was sent in anticipation of the Lunar New Year (also known in the US as "Chinese New Year") back in February.  The sender included an addition to one of the corks in lower right corner: they hand-wrote "2015" on one of the corks without a date.  You can see it better below in this photo. 

South Africa

ZA-66791

South Africa, Robben Island, off Cape Town, Gerald Hoberman

My first official Postcrossing card from South Africa.  This card features Robben Island where civil rights leader Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years.

Switzerland

CH-230381

DHC-6 Twin Otter

This card,  of a DHC-6 Twin Otter numbered 7-741 and colored in red and white with a Swiss flag on the tale, is a wonderful addition to the blog.  This plane is apparently owned by the Swiss Air Force.  Wikipedia shows that one of these would cost around $7,000,000 USD.

A video of this airplane taking off from Bern, Switzerland can be seen in the video below.

Finland

FI-2204476

Aero Oy poster from 1929

This poster of an Junkers G 24 plane and sail boat is a Finnish vintage travel postcard card advertising trips from Helsinki to Tallinna and Helsinki to Tukholma (better known know as Tallin, Estonia and Stockholm, Sweden.)

United Kingdom

This card sent from my friend Bryony in Wales shows two sandcastles: one with a Welsh flag with a red dragon and the other the Union Jack.  

Germany

DE-4013893

Nationalpark Bayerische Wald

The Bavarian Forrest National Park was Germany's first national park, created in 1970.  According to wikipedia, when combined with the Bohemian Forest in the Czech Republic, the two create the largest forested area in Central Europe.

Netherlands

NL-2878824

An airplane landing at sunset

India

IN-132263

Red Fort - Delhi, India

This card of the Red Fort in Delhi, India is of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Czech Republic

CZ-539072

Praha - Anno 1922

This cad features a photo of Prague, the capital of Czech Republic, as it was in 1922.  It also has the below stamp done by the poster artist Alfons Mucha.

Poland

Warszawa, Zamek Królewski

The Royal Castle and Sigmund's Column in Warsaw at sunset.  The Column and Royal Castle were both destroyed by the Germans during and after the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 in an attempt to destroy Polish culture.  

The Castle and the surrounding Old Town are today UNESCO World Heritage Sites.  

Today also marks the end of the Poland Postcard Extravaganza.  I hope you have enjoyed this trip to Poland through Postcards.

Poland

Warszawa -  Warsaw - Varsovia

This cute multi-card was one of a few featuring a photo of a cute cat (in this case a tuxedo cat) and images of Warsaw's Old Town.  The top picture features the main square.  From left to right, the smaller images at the bottom feature the Royal Castle and then the Polish Poster Gallery.

Poland

Corporal Cadet Jan Rocki "Bratek" and a medical orderly from the "Zniwiarz" Group on the roof of a building at 34 Mickiewicza.  Photo by Stefan Lewandowski.

This card is part of a series of cards from the Warsaw Uprising Museum celebrating the 1944 Uprising.  The image features Jan Rocki (left) code named "Bratek" or, in English "Pansy" and an unknown medical orderly.   The photographer apparently survived the war and was still alive in 2012. 

Corporal Cadet Rocki also survived the Uprising.  The Uprsising Museum's website lists him as having surviving the war and passing away October, 10, 1998 at the age of 73.  The identity of the female medical orderly was apparently unknown at the time the postcard was printed.

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Poland

Lady with a Squirrel, 1935-1936.

This non-postcard folded card is of Polish artist Roman Kramztyk (1885-1942) painting Lady with a Squirrel.  From information gathered from his Wikipedia (both Polish and English) pages,  Kramztyk had moved to Paris in 1922 but returned to his native Poland each year.  He unfortunately was in Poland in September 1939 when the Nazis invaded the country.  

Having a Jewish background (his grandfather was a Rabbi who first taught the Talmud in Polish), he was sent to the Warsaw Ghetto by the invading Nazis.  He was shot on the Ghetto street in 1942 apparently by a member of the Nazi-controlled Russian Liberation Army.

I got this card actually at the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology in Krakow.  As it is not of a Japanese artist and doesn't appear to be of a Japanese style, I'm not sure why it was there.

Poland

Kaszëbë 

This beautiful postcard features a series of flowers with the center of the flowers forming a rooster-like design.  

This card, along with a lot of other of these cards is made by Ewa Jaloszynska and available at www.nanaelo.pl

Poland

Zamek na Wawelu

A postcard of the Ceiling of the Hall of Deputies in Wawel Castle in Krakow.  

The ceiling has a number of individually faces depicting various different people in a variety of classes.  It is believed that the these faces were to remind the Polish Kings that they were the king of all of the people, regardless of their class or background.   

Poland

Polkish folk art

This panoramic postcard featuring a man and a women is actually a longer representation of the card featured here.

Poland

Bitwa Pod Orsza

Battle of Orsha

This card shows the painting the Battle of Orsha (circa 1524-1530) attributed to the German Renaissance artist Hans Krell.  The battle, fought in present-day Orsha, Belarus, took place on September 8, 1514.  

The painting is housed in the National Museum in Warsaw and a clearer photo of it can be seen at this page.

Poland

Wzór 16

This postcard with two roosters, called Design 16, shows beautiful folk artwork.

Poland

Kukuryku

This card features a drawn number of roosters and chicks and is part of the Polish Folklore card series by Ewa Jaloszynska and are available at www.nanaelo.pl.  

The word on the front of the card, kukuryku, apparently translates as "cock-a-doodle-doo."

Poland

* heart * Warsazawa

This heart shaped postcard features a variety of sights of Warsaw including two mermaid statues, Old town, the royal castle, and the Chopin statue.  .

Poland

Warszawa

This card features the imposing Zamek, or Royal Castle of Warsaw.  In the foreground, the column and statue is King Sigismund III Vasa, king of Poland-Lithuania Commonwealth from 1587 to 1632 and Sweden from 1592-1599 when he was deposed.   

His statue features so prominently as in 1596 he moved Poland's capital from Krakow to Warsaw.  

The actual column stone for the Sigismund Column  has been twice replaced.  The original stood for 243 years from 1644 until 1887.  The second one stood from 1887 until 1944 when it was toppled by the Germans during the Warsaw Uprising on September 1, 1944.  The current column was raised in 1949.

Poland

Universitas Jagellonica Cracoviensis -1364

Featuring the symbol of the Jagiellon University of Krakow, this card shows that the university was founded in 1364, 651 years ago.  The university is the oldest in Poland, second oldest in Central Europe (after Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic), and is one of the oldest universities in the world.     

Poland

Babie lato (Indian Summer) - Józef Marian Chełmoński

This painting by Polish artist Józef Marian Chełmoński is called, in translation, Indian Summer and features a women laying on the ground with her black dog looking over what appears to be a herd of animals.  This painting can be seen at the National Museum of Warsaw.  

Poland

The Statue of Chronos in the National Hall, 1768

The Statue of Chronos, the ancient Greek God of time with a globe on his back is located in the Royal Castle in Warsaw.  The scythe in his hands would tell the time when the statue was a working clock.  The statue is located near where the first bombs fell on Warsaw when the Germans began bombing the city at the start of the war in September 1939.  

Since the Royal Castle's reconstruction, the clock is not active but is symbolically kept at the minute the first bomb hit the castle in 1939.