USA: Tre Cime di Lavaredo

Postcard from USA with Italian scenery.

The Tre Cime di Lavaredo (Italian for "the three peaks of Lavaredo"), are three distinctive battlement-like peaks, in the Sexten Dolomites of northeastern Italy. They are probably one of the best-known mountain groups in the Alps.

Thank you Glen

Switzerland: Jura-Simplon Railway

Beatiful postcard from Switzerland

The Jura–Simplon Railway was a railway company, which was formed from the 1890 merger of the Western Switzerland–Simplon Company (SOS) and the Pont–Vallorbe Railway (PV). Earlier in the same year the SOS had also purchased the Jura–Bern–Luzern Railway (JBL). Its network stretched from Basel–Biel railway to the border crossings to France at Delle, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Les Verrières, Vallorbe and Geneva, as well as to Brig, Lucerne and Brienz with a route length of 937 km.

A year after its establishment, the JS presented a definite project for a Simplon Tunnel and in 1895 a treaty was signed with Italy for the construction of a tunnel from Brig to Iselle. Construction of this 19,803 meter long tunnel began in 1898. But during construction, the Jura–Simplon Railway was nationalised on 1 May 1903 and absorbed into the Swiss Federal Railways, which completed the Simplon Tunnel in 1906. The tunnel was the longest railway tunnel in the world until the opening of the Seikan Tunnel in 1988.


Thank you very much Alina!

China: Shanghai

Shanghai is the largest Chinese city by population and the largest city proper by population in the world. It is one of the four direct-controlled municipalities of the People's Republic of China, with a population of more than 24 million as of 2013. It is a global financial center, and a transport hub with the world's busiest container port. Located in the Yangtze River Delta in East China, Shanghai sits on the south edge of the mouth of the Yangtze in the middle portion of the Chinese coast. The municipality borders the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the north, south and west, and is bounded to the east by the East China Sea.

Thank you Liwen!

Poland: Łódź

Łódź is the third-largest city in Poland. Located in the central part of the country, it had a population of 742,387 in December 2009. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is approximately 135 kilometres (84 mi) south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of canting: depicting a boat, it alludes to the city's name which translates literally as "boat".

Łódź, the former textile industry empire, today is a city of modern technologies, creative enterprises and grand events. It is a metropolis where a landscape of industrial architecture mixes with silhouettes of office buildings, production halls, culture and sports buildings.

Thank you Kinga!

Easter 2015

New Serbian stamps and FDC!

Easter(Old English usually Ēastrun, -on, or -an; also Ēastru, -o; and Ēostre),also called Pasch (derived, through Latin: Pascha and Greek Πάσχα Paskha, from Aramaic: פסחא‎, cognate to Hebrew: פֶּסַח‎ Pesaḥ), or Resurrection Sunday, is a festival and holiday celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, described in the New Testament as having occurred three days after his crucifixion by Romans at Calvary. It is the culmination of the Passion of Christ, preceded by Lent (or Great Lent), a forty-day period of fasting, prayer, and penance.

The week before Easter is called Holy Week, and it contains the days of the Easter Triduum, including Maundy Thursday (also known as Holy Thursday), commemorating the Last Supper and its preceding foot washing, as well as Good Friday, commemorating the crucifixion and death of Jesus. In western Christianity, Eastertide, the Easter Season, begins on Easter Sunday and lasts seven weeks, ending with the coming of the fiftieth day, Pentecost Sunday. In Orthodoxy, the season of Pascha begins on Pascha and ends with the coming of the fortieth day, the Feast of the Ascension.

Easter is a moveable feast, meaning it is not fixed in relation to the civil calendar. The First Council of Nicaea (325) established the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon, the full moon that occurs on or soonest after 21 March (taken to be the date of the equinox). Ecclesiastically, the equinox is thus reckoned to be on 21 March (although the astronomical equinox occurs on 20 March in most years), and the "Full Moon" is not necessarily on the astronomically correct date. The date of Easter therefore varies from 22 March to 25 April inclusive. Eastern Christianity bases its calculations on the Julian calendar, whose 21 March corresponds, during the 21st century, to 3 April in the Gregorian calendar, and in which therefore the celebration of Easter varies between 4 April and 8 May.

Netherlands: Deer

Deer are the ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. Species in the family include white-tailed deer, mule deer such as black-tailed deer, elk, moose, red deer, reindeer (caribou), fallow deer, roe deer, pudú and chital. Male deer of all species (except the Chinese water deer) and female reindeer grow and shed new antlers each year. In this they differ from permanently horned animals such as antelope, which are in the same order as deer and may bear a superficial resemblance to them.

Thank you Petra!

USA: Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops

Another nice postcard from Mimi – Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops by Jan Sovák

Jan Sovák (born February 13, 1953 in Tábor) is a Czech paleoartist and renowned painter currently living in Canada (since 1982). He has done many paintings for various scientists including paleontologist Phil Currie. Many of his paintings depict dinosaurs and other popular primeval organisms.

Sovák was born in former Czechoslovakia and moved to Canada in 1982. His work has been published in over 170 books in more than 15 languages. More than 40 museums around the world house examples of his art on prehistoric animals, and his illustrations also have appeared on educational television in 12 films on Discovery Channel Worldwide.

Thank you Mimi!

USA: Missing in action

Very nice postcard from USA: Missing in action by Yoshitomo Nara.

Yoshitomo Nara (美智奈良, born 5 December 1959 in Hirosaki, Japan) is a Japanese artist. He lives and works in Tokyo, though his artwork has been exhibited worldwide. Nara received his B.F.A. (1985) and an M.F.A. (1987) from the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music. Between 1988 and 1993, Nara studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, in Germany. Nara has had nearly 40 solo exhibitions since 1984. He is represented in New York City by Pace Gallery, in Los Angeles by Blum & Poe and in London by Stephen Friedman Gallery.

 

Thank you Mimi very much!

USA: Amber Cattails

Amber Cattails by Dale Chihuly at The Denver Botanical Gardens.

Thank you Barbara

China: Giant pandas

The giant panda, also known as panda bear or simply panda, is a bear native to south central China.
The giant panda lives in a few mountain ranges in central China, mainly in Sichuan province, but also in neighbouring provinces, namely Shaanxi and Gansu. As a result of farming, deforestation, and other development, the giant panda has been driven out of the lowland areas where it once lived.

The giant panda is a conservation reliant endangered species. A 2007 report shows 239 pandas living in captivity inside China and another 27 outside the country. As of December 2014, 49 giant pandas live in captivity outside China, living in 18 zoos in 13 different countries. Wild population estimates vary; one estimate shows that there are about 1,590 individuals living in the wild, while a 2006 study via DNA analysis estimated that this figure could be as high as 2,000 to 3,000.Some reports also show that the number of giant pandas in the wild is on the rise.

Thank you Yuki!