Staphorst

Staphorst is a municipality and a town in the eastern Netherlands.This card shows a few views of the villages of Staphorst and its southern neighbour Rouveen, which came into existence, as in the 13th century monks, started to bring the bogs and swamps into culture. All the farms were built along the long road through the bog area. Thus a lengthy row of farms was built, becoming the 7 miles long village of Staphorst-Rouveen. This phenomenon is called in Dutch: lintbebouwing (ribbon urbanization). In many parts of the Netherlands this type of village is quite common, e.g. Vriezenveen, the villages along river dykes in the Netherlands, the so-called moor-colonies in the provinces
Drenthe and Groningen, as well as the German regions opposite the border. A specialty for Staphorst is, that after a farmer's death, his land was often divided between his sons. The son, who didn't inherit his father's farm, built a farmhouse for his own behind the other. Therefore, many pieces of farmland are very lengthy; yet narrow (e.g.1500 x 40 metres). Originally, each piece of land was 125 metres wide. The farms are of the traditional Low Saxon type. They have green doors and window shutters. Most farms existing now were built between 1850 and 1910. This pretty card was sent to me by Jan from Holland. 

Novodevichy Convent

Novodevichy Convent, also known as Bogoroditse-Smolensky Monastery is probably the best-known cloister of Moscow. Its name, sometimes translated as the New Maidens' Monastery, was devised to differ from an ancient maidens' convent within the Moscow Kremlin. Unlike other Moscow cloisters, it has remained virtually intact since the 17th century. In 2004, it was proclaimed a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Novodevichy Convent was founded in 1524 by Grand Prince Vasili III in commemoration of the conquest of Smolensk in 1514. It was built as a fortress at a curve of the Moskva River and became an important part of the southern defensive belt of the capital, which had already included a number of other monasteries. Upon its founding, the Novodevichy Convent was granted 3,000 rubles and the villages of Akhabinevo and Troparevo. Ivan the Terrible would later grant a number of other villages to the convent.
Novodevichy Convent was known to have sheltered many ladies from the Russian royal families and boyar clans, who had been forced to take the veil, such as Feodor I's wife Boris Godunov until he became a ruler himself), Sophia Alekseyevna (Peter the Great’s sister), Eudoxia Lopukhina (Peter the Great's first wife), and others. In 1610–1611, the Novodevichy Convent was captured by a Polish unit under the command of Aleksander Gosiewski. Once the convent was retaken by Russian forces, the tsar supplied it with permanent guards (100 Streltsy in 1616, 350 soldiers in 1618). By the end of the 17th century, the Novodevichy Convent possessed 36 villages (164,215 desyatinas of land) in 27 uyezds of Russia. In 1744, it owned 14,489 peasants. This pretty card was sent to me by my friend Olga.

Catkins in Spring

A catkin, or ament, is a strand of tiny unisexual flowers, blooming on
many species of trees in a form that brings to mind the graceful trees
on a blue willow plate.

Trees with catkins include those of the Beech family (oaks,
chestnuts), the Willow family (willows, aspens, poplars, cottonwoods),
the Birch family (birches, alders, hornbeams), the Mulberry family,
and the Walnut family (walnuts, hickories). In the Willow family, both
male and female flowers occur in the form of catkins, and for most
species, a given tree has only one type, either male or female. In the
Willow genus (Salix species), many catkins are small and upright,
while cottonwoods and aspens have drooping catkins.

The catkins shown on the card on birch trees I Finland. This lovely
card was sent to me by my dear friend Pia.

Place de la Bastille - July Column

The Place de la Bastille is a square in Paris, where the Bastille prison stood until the 'Storming of the Bastille' and its subsequent physical destruction between 14 July 1789 and 14 July 1790 during the French Revolution; no vestige of it remains. The square straddles 3 arrondissements of Paris, namely the 4th, 11th and 12th. The square and its surrounding areas are normally called simply Bastille. The square is often home to concerts and similar events. The northeastern area of Bastille is busy at night due to many cafés, bars, nightclubs, and concert halls. As a consequence of its historical significance, the square is often used for political demonstrations, including the massive anti-CPE demonstration of 28 March 2006.

The July Column (Colonne de Juillet) that commemorates the events of the July Revolution (1830) stands at the centre of the square. Other notable features include the Bastille Opera, the Bastille subway station and a section of the Canal Saint Martin. Prior to 1984, the former Bastille railway station stood where the opera house now stands. Thank you Adeline my friend for this nice card.

Arts & Crafts of Belarus

My friend Konstantin from Minsk sent me this lovely card which depicts national traditions such as I handicraft, clothing, ornaments, music (in this case, a balalaika playing doll is shown) et al. The cover in which this card was enclosed had these lovely stamps on it.

Carl Larsson

Carl Larsson (May 28, 1853 – January 22, 1919) was a Swedish painter and interior designer, representative of the Arts and Crafts Movement. His many paintings include oils, watercolors, and frescoes. He considered his finest work to be Midvinterblot (Midwinter Sacrifice), a large wall mural now displayed inside the Swedish National Museum of Fine Arts. This interesting card with a self-portrait by the famous Carl Larsson, with his daughter Brita was painted in 1895. My friend Ella sent it to me.

Aniva Lighthouse, Sakhalin, Sea of Okhotsk

The Japanese built the Aniva lighthouse in 1939, on a chunk of rock off the southern coast of Sakhalin, a thin 950 km long island situated just east of Russia, between the Sea of Japan and Russia’s Sea of Okhotsk. Aniva Lighthouse is a nuclear powered lighthouse and it's one of 132 nuclear powered lighthouses on Russian North coast! The view - yes true "amazing", but I don't recommend a visit to this lighthouses or similar lighthouses on Russia’s Northern coast, because of high radiation levels inside and in the vicinity! They have been abandoned a long time ago!

These nuclear powered lighthouses were built by the Soviet Union as un-manned lighthouses in the very difficult and un-inhabitable environment of Northern Russia. These lighthoses were programmed to run by themselves. However, these lighthouses began collapsing following the collapse of the USSR. Looters broke into these lighthouses unmindful of the dangers and destroyed the equipment there. In the summer of 2001, two people received radioactive doses after they attempted to dismantle the lighthouse near Kandalaksha in Murmansk region. They tried to extract lead from the lighthouse in order to sell it later as scrap metal. They were not aware of the fact that there was a strong radiation source inside the lighthouse.

This very attractive card with lovely stamps on them, was sent to me by my friend Masha in Moscow.