Kota Kinabalu City Mosque

The magnificent Kota Kinabalu City Mosque was opened on February 2, 2000 to celebrate the day that the city received official city status from the Malaysian governmen.  It is in the Sabah region, known as "the land below the wind" because it's located below the typhoon belt, as the send told me: "thus setting the state free from climatic disturbances".  It was sent to me on 31 December 2009 and postmarked Kota Kinabalu.

Amuri Museum of Worker's Housing, Finland

Amuri is the name given to the part of Tampere where as many as 5,000 industrial workers lived in the wooden housing provided from the mid 19th century. The houses were arranged with kitchens shared between two or four houses.  Part of this area has been preserved as a museum, the Amuri Museum of Worker's Housing, consisting of five residential buildings and four outbuildings, plus several shops.

This card, postmarked Tampere and dated 2 November 2009, shows the interior of a coachman's house in about 1930.

Delfshaven, South Holland

When this card popped through our letter box a few weeks ago I was delighted by it.  In spite of our recent wintry weather, I'm still attracted by lovely snow scenes.  What I hadn't realised was that it captures something historic as well as beautiful.

The scene is a canal in an area in Rotterdam called Delfshaven.  Delfshaven means the port of Delft, and it was created in 1389 because Delft itself had no access to a major river.  Since then it first became an independent city in 1811, and later a part of Rotterdam.

In the scene on the card there is a church just to the left of the barge's mast.  In 1417 there was a Roman Catholic church on the site, the church of St. Anthony.  During the reformation it became a Protestant church.

In 1608 a group of English dissenters left the Anglican church to found their own community in the Netherlands.  After 11 years in Leiden they decided that they would go to America so that they could worship how they wanted and in July 1620 they left from Delfshaven in the ship "Speedwell".  The group of pilgrims knelt on the quayside near the church to pray before they set off.  The Speedwell set sail for England and joined forces with the Mayflower in Southampton before they both set off to cross the Atlantic.  After a while the Speedwell started to leak so both ships turned back to England where many of the Speedwell's passengers transferred to the Mayflower, which finally left Plymouth in September 1620.

The church later became known as the Pilgrim Fathers' Church because of this association but it's also known as the Old Church, De Oude.

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday.

Augenblicke - moments

A beautifully captured view of a cabin window, found in Montafon, near Vorarlberg, Austria, an area known for skiing and hiking.  It was sent to me from a village called Dalaas (I had to look twice!) and dated 12 December 2008.

Bangkok

I've had a few stunning postcards from Thailand but this one I find fascinating.  On the reverse of the card it says:

Lan Than, Chinese Rock Giants (left and right) with weapons in hand and wearing a tight suit of armour. Marco Polo, Chinese Giant in European cloth (middle).

There are a number of different rock giants in the grounds of Wat Pho, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha.  The ones with weapons represent nobleman warriors who were high-ranking soldiers. They are the gate guardians.  The four pairs of giants in European clothes represent Marco Polo from the Venetian Republic who travelled through Asia in the 13th century.  All the rock giants were carved from ballast from the trading vessels used to trade with China.  The Marco Polo figure looks so out of place alongside the Chinese warriors.

The card is unsued, and was sent to me in an envelope in 2008.

B is for Bangkok.  A post for ABC Wednesday.

Beachgirls

I love this card from Finland!  On the back it says several things that I don't understand but I can read what it gives as the date: 1920.  I think the idea is that it's a reproduction on a 1920 print.  I'm not sure.  Do you think the hairstyles are 1920?  Obviously I'm not well-versed in Finnish hairstyles of that era, but some of them look fairly  modern to my eye.

The card came to me through Postcrossing with a very clear Helsinki postmark, dated 18 January 2010.  The wording on the back is
Kuvia menneiltä ajoilta - Vintage Photo Reprints
00602 Rantatytöt n,. 1920
Beachgirls.

The Highland Light Infantry

The Highland Light Infantry was a regiment in the British Army from 1881 until 1959. It was formed by the amalgamation of two Scottish regiments and in the same way became amalgamated with the Royal Scots Fusiliers to become the Royal Highland Fusiliers in 1959.

The card has a divided back, with no mention of it being for inland use only, and a one penny postage stamp.  The postage was raised for postcards in Britain from a halfpenny to a penny in June 1918.  It increased to one and a half pennies (three ha'pence) in June 1921.  After considerable protests, this was once again reduced to a penny in May 1922.  The stamp on the card was in circulation from 1922 until 1934.  In fact a very high resolution scan shows the postmark to be St Michael's Tenterden, and the date April 1934.

And why were they called a "light" infantry?  It's tempting to say that it's because their equipment was lighter than regular equipment but it's more a description of their role.  Light infantries came into being as skirmishers who didn't fight in the disciplined tight formations of the ordinary infantry.  Today that distinction has gone and the role has, in the UK, been taken over by parachute or mountain infantries and special forces, none of whom have the heavy weaponry of other battalions.

The Highland Light Infantry was the only Highland regiment to wear trews as uniform, as can be seen on the card.  Kilts were authorised in 1947.

Traditional trews were almost skin tight garments cut on the bias so that the tartan would lie diagonally.  This bias gave the trews some stretch.  The seam would be at the back of the leg.  Modern trews are no longer cut on the bias and are more like trousers, but they have no side seam. 

The card is titled "Highland Light Infantry at Laffans Plain".  Laffans Plain is a former parade ground in Aldershot, Hampshire, in the south of England.  Aldershot was a village until it was decided that an army camp should be built there in 1855.  It is now a town with a population of over 30,000 and is known as "The Home of the British Army".

This post has a Scottish flavour to tie in with Burns' Night, tonight 25 January.  As a  tie-in in a different direction, I am reproducing Burns' Selkirk Grace (with English translation).  I think it is particularly poignant when remembering the earthquake in Haiti.

The Selkirk Grace

Some hae meat and canna eat,

And some wad eat that want it,

But we hae meat and we can eat,

And sae the Lord be thankit.

Some have meat and cannot eat
And some would eat but want for it
But we have meat and we can eat
And so the Lord be thanked for it.

Festival headquarters

Saint Stephen the Great of Moldavia

I was very excited to find a card from Moldova waiting for me when I looked to see if anything had arrived for me.  Postmarked Chisinau (the capital of Moldova) and dated 29 December 2009, it's taken over three weeks to reach me.

It shows a monument to Saint Stephen the Great who was Prince of Moldavia (not quite the same as Moldova) from 1457 to 1504 .

The monument is near the cathedral, the Birth of Christ Cathedral or Christmas Cathedral, shown on this stamp (behind the swimmer).  I'm afraid I don't know the significance of the swimmer.

Sandbanks, England

It looks just like an ordinary beach, but Sandbanks has two claims to fame that you couldn't possibly guess from this card.  Three really, if I add in that it is only the second card I have ever received from a fellow UK resident through Postcrossing, and it came from just down the road!  It may even have been posted closer than that but the postmark is illegible.  The card is dated 4 November 2009.

Sandbanks itself is a narrow spit or peninsula on the Dorset coast and boasts one of the largest natural harbours in the world.  The beach is thought to be the best, certainly on the south coast of England, and possibly in all the UK.

So the claims to fame are:

• that the price of property is the fourth highest in the world.
• that Marconi lived and worked in a hotel, the North Haven Inn, during the late 19th century.
  

Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries

No, it isn't a mistake, it's Saint Mary in the plural, however you write that in English.   It's a village on the coast of Provence which got its name from a legend that Mary Jacobe, mother of James and sister to the mother of Jesus; Mary Salome, mother of James and John;  Sarah their handmaid; Lararus and his sisters Mary Magdelene and Martha; St Maximinus; and Cedonius all drifted ashore in a boat.

The group built a small oratory on the spot and most of them went their separate ways.  But Mary Jacobe, Mary Salome and Sarah stayed and were eventually buried there.  Their tomb became an attraction for pilgrimages and eventually in the 9th century, the oratory was replaced by a fortified church. 

The building of the fortified church was supervised by the Archbishop of Arles.  One day the Saracens raided the town and kidnapped him.  The ransom they demanded was quickly paid by the townspeople so the Saracens returned the Archbishop on his throne, before leaving with the payment.  It was only then that the people realised he died died while in captivity and that the Saracens had carefully returned a dead body.

The card is a reproduction of Van Gogh's "Boats on the beach at Saintes-Maries" 1888.  The original hangs in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.  The card was sent to me from Finland, an unusual choice for December 2009, but very welcome because I visited Saintes-Maries last summer, and the beach really does look very like this.

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday.

Lake Saiful Maluk, Kaghan Valley

Kaghan Valley's prime attraction is the stunning Lake Saiful-Maluk, located 10 km to the east of Naran at an altitude of 3215 meters. The lake is surrounded by an amphitheatre of snowcapped mountains and it is not hard to see why local legends speak of princes and fairies who visit the lake at night to dance and bathe.  The lake is delightful in the summer when the meadows of alpine flowers are in bloom and the water is reflecting the peak of Malika Parbat (5291 m).

Arantzazu

Arantzazu, according to legend, was given its name when a shepherd saw the figure of the Virgin in a thorn bush and exclaimed, "Arantzan zu?!" meaning, "In a thorn bush, you?!"   A rather less imaginative derivation is that it means a place filled with hawthorns.

The Franciscan sanctuary was founded 500 years ago in the north of Spain, in the Basque country, not far from Oñati.  It's situation is most spectacular, on the edge of a ravine and surrounded by forests, hills and meadows.  Not only is it a place of pilgrimage, but also the starting place for many trails and circuits for visiting the surrounding national park.

The sanctuary has survived three major fires and been repaired and rebuilt but in 1950 a major renovation was done and the resulting architecture is very reminiscent of Le Harvre.  The foundation set up to maintain the sanctuary also provides facilities for tourists.   In this picture it looks rather forbidding, probably partly due to the architecture and the winter trees.

The card was posted to me from Vitoria, on 29 December 2009.

My first post for ABC Wednesday where you can find many others.

The Exeter Mail Coach

Another card from the box I rescued from the auction:

Lioness attacking horse of the Exeter Mail Coach outside the Pheasant Inn, Winterslow, near Salisbury, 1816.  The lioness, which had escaped from a travelling menagerie, was soon caught, and the horse is said to have continued its career on the roads for many years.
Coloured aquatint, engraved by R. Havell, published 17th February, 1817.

Two of the passengers in the coach ran into the house and locked themselves in, while a dog distracted the lioness.  An account in "Old Showmen and the Old London Fairs" gives a slightly different version which ends in the death of the dog and the horse.

Darwin

The name Darwin to me means one of two things, either Charles Darwin, the English naturalist who wrote The Origin of the Species, or Darwin in Northern Territory, Australia.  I know little enough about either, but Darwin in Australia has been nothing but a place name until now, until this card came to me through Postcrossing, postmarked in Darwin itself and dated 25 November 2009.

That northern part of Australia was first populated by the Larrakia people (for thousands of years) and first mapped by Europeans in the 1660s when the first Dutch explorers arrived.  The first British person to see the harbour was John Stokes who named it after Charles Darwin.

In spite of its age, all the buildings in Darwin are modern, the result of two major disasters.  The first was in 1942 when the same Japanese fleet that bombed Pearl Harbour then bombed Darwin, the first of many raids.  Then in 1974 on christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Cyclone Tracy devastated the town and destroyed nearly three-quarters of the buildings.  An airlift was organised to evacuate 30,000 residents.

So you see in the postcard a city that has been almost entirely rebuilt twice, leaving it one of the most modern cities in Australia.

Daisy

Images of summer, memories of childhood, all called to mind by this card sent to me from Nieuwegein on 28 December 2009.  And I once had a dog called Daisy.

The Boston Stump

The Boston Stump, or more properly St Botolph's Church of the Parish of Boston, is 700 years old, give or take a decade.  The building started in 1309 but it was 70 years later before it was finished.  One of the vicars in the 17th century, John Cotton, followed the Pilgrim Fathers to America and was responsible for founding a new Boston there.

This card, bought in the early 1960s and never used, gives a good idea of the height of the tower which can be seen for miles around.  And of course, the reverse is true - from the top of the tower, you can see for miles, they say 32 miles.   To check that out, I recommend that you visit The Daily Photo Gallery belonging to John of English Wilderness fame.

PFF: Calais

Calais has suffered from being flattened twice in the 20th century during each of the two World Wars, but it does have considerable history if you care to find it.  This card, sent to my father on 4 July 1974 and postmarked Calais, does nothing to enhance its image I feel.

The people who sent it, teachers, the whole family, could find nothing better to relate than the price of items in the local supermarket:
"We have visited the Hypermarket & were tempted by flowered bowls and sharp knives!  Blouses at 35 and 25 francs were on display in masses." 
My father will have been enthralled.

The scenes:
62 - Calais (Pas-de-Calais)
1.  L'Hôtel de Ville, the Town Hall and its belfry.
2.  The new ferry boat Dover-Calais "Free Enterprise".
3.  The flower clock.
4.  The monument of the citizens of Calais.

The fourth picture shows a sculpture by Rodin "Les Bourgeois de Calais" and this gives a clue to Calais' past.  Because it's so very close to England, Calais has always been a point of entry for the English into France, welcome or not.  IN 1347 Edward III laid siege to the town and after a year had starved the people into surrender.  Six eminent townspeople offered their lives so that the rest of the town would be spared, and it is these six people who are commemorated in the sculpture.

The whole area is steeped in history: the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the Battle of Agincourt, the Battle of Crécy.  Yet the place is best known for short shopping trips across the Channel, booze cruises.  But Calais is fighting back and has a team of "Greeters" who will guide anyone interested around and tell them the many fascinating stories of the area.

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday.

A picnic on the grass

Every so often you see an image that sparks something in your imagination and here is one that has done just that for me.  A card arriving last week from Norway of a painting by Helena Ferm Saliba has done just that.   

A picnic can mean so many different things, a makeshift meal, an outing with the children or, I like to imagine, a romantic meal for two outdoors.  And it must be just that here.  Look at the meal: only enough for two - bread and fruit in the basket, cheese and grapes on the plate, a bottle of what looks very like champagne and two glasses, all on a cloth laid in the meadow and surrounded by blossom.

There is a girl's straw hat on the cloth but where has she gone?

Map of Michigan

This has probably been one of the highlights over the last few days, a quilted map of Michigan.  How beautiful!  I have always been fairly useless with my hands so I stand in great awe of anyone who can produce such a piece of art.  It is postmarked from Gaylord MI, and dated 4 January 2010.

Michigan Quilt
This unique creation showing all of the Michigan counties was designed, placed, pieced and quilted by Marion Welsh to commemorate 1987, Michigan's Sesquicentennial.  It is on display in the Michigan Forest Visitor Center, Hartwick Pines State Park at Grayling, Michigan
Photo by John Penrod.

The Pyramids

I don't think this card need any introduction at all, because the pyramids are probably the first thing anyone associates with Egypt.  It may be one of the great symbols of Egypt but I don't think I have any other card showing them.  This one I think is particularly beautiful.  It was sent to me on 11 August 2009, and postmarked Cairo.

The three pyramids of Giza shown are from left to right, Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, after the Pharaohs buried inside.  They were built 4500 years ago.  The Great Pyramid is the only remaining example of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  The whole site is now designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The small boat on the Nile is called a feluca.

Queen Eleanor Cross, Northampton (a love story)

This is an unused card, dating from before 1918 but after 1902 though more likely after 1907.  Reasoning for this: the postage rate is stated as 1/2p for inland postage which was the rate in place until 1918. The card does have a divided back which was allowed in the UK from September 1902.  However many of the earlier cards with divided backs caution against using them for foreign countries.  This doesn't so I'm assuming it dates from some time after the majority of other countries accepted divided backs which seems to be around 1907.

Back to the subject matter of the card.  It shows one of the 12 Eleanor Crosses originally built between 1291 and 1294.  They were erected by Edward I in memory of his wife, Eleanor of Castile.  Theirs was an arranged marriage as was so common in the Middle Ages, but unlike many, it was a happy marriage.  They were rarely separated and Eleanor accompanied Edward on military campaigns.

When she died in Nottinghamshire in 1290, after a fever, her body was taken for burial to Westminster Abbey, a journey lasting 12 days, stopping each night along the way.  Edward accompanied her body.  He ordered crosses to be built at each of the stopping places in honour of the wife "whom living we dearly cherished, and whom dead we cannot cease to love.".

Of the 12 crosses only three remain, one of them being the Northampton cross at Hardingstone.

Magnificent mailboxes from New Mexico

Magical, memorable, marvellous mailboxes, in fact. They are clearly American because the back of the card says:

H7599- Canyon Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico

But the card is equally clearly French, printed by Aquarupella, Imprimerie de l'Ouest, La Rochelle. It was sent to me on 30 October 2009, from Paris, with a stamp showing the Place de la Bourse in Bordeaux. the postmark though, doesn't show a place, just the date and a code number.

That is a disappointment to me. When we lived in Paris, I noticed that each arrondissement had its own postmark and my ambition at the time was to have an example of every one of the twenty. Needless to say, I never did manage a full set, and those that I did collect haven't survived the several moves we've made since then. It looks as though that particular ambition will be impossible to fulfil.

Singing in Barry

This card is dated  19 October 1907 and postmarked Barry BO Glamorgan.  I though possibly the road shown, Windsor Road, might be where the sender was staying, but no, the address given is Princes Street.  Barry is in south Wales, not far from Cardiff.

The intriguing message on the back reads:

Dear Miss D received your kind letter safely Cannot send a letter very busy working and singing So I hope you will accept PC I hope to send you a letter has [sic] soon as possible awfully busy now working late every night till 7 PM and sometimes all night kind regards best wishes JTE

What on earth can he have been doing?  I've been assuming it was a "he" which I suppose is a big assumption.   Who would work all night?  My first thought was that he/she was a singer, but surely not all night?

PFF: Snow

As Britain struggles, along with many other parts of the world, with abnormally cold weather, we heard today that one place recorded lower temperatures than Finland.  So I've postponed my original choice for today and replaced it with a snowy scene from Finland.

This one was sent to me almost a year ago, on 10 February 2009, from Jyväskyl.  The writer said,
"we have received quite a lot of snow but it isn't very cold.  Now in the evening it is -13 C but in the daytime it is warmer.  It is nice to wait for the springtime."

It is indeed! It's also very good to see that snow can be beautiful in the right place.

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday.

Formosan Monopoly Bureau, Taihoku

It's probably too small for you to see, but the text under the picture does say "The Formosan Monopoly Bureau Taihoku".  In one of my earlier posts Chris Overstreet from Wild Postcards expressed some surprise at the name Formosa being used, and here it is again.

The card was sent to me through Postcrossing on 29 December 2009, postmarked Taiwan R.O.C.  On it the sender says "I live in a beautiful country, Taiwan, but we all like to call it Formosa".  He also adds that the building took two years to build (1913) and eleven years to complete (1922).

The building was created because the previous one had been outgrown.  Its work was to take charge of the monopolisation of opium, camphor, salt, and cigarettes during  Japanese rule (1895 to 1945)

Pevensey Castle, Sussex

1066, a date well known to generations of schoolchildren in the UK, at least you have to hope so.  It is the date when William the conqueror invaded Britain by landing in Sussex,  found Pevensey Castle unoccupied and Pevensey Bay a safe haven for his fleet.

The site was originally a fort built by the Romans, but after the invasion William the Conqueror gave it to his half-brother who built a keep and bailey inside the fort walls.  It withstood several sieges over time but finally fell into ruin at the end of the 14th century.  Because of its great defensive position, though, it was occupied on and off during wars: in 1588 during the threat of the Spanish Armada, and during World War II American and Canadian troops were stationed there.  The latter may seem bizarre but the walls were re-fortified in a way to blend with the Roman walls to disguise the troops' presence.

This card is unused, bought by my father in the 1980s.

Utah

Utah - the Beehive State
Settled by Mormon Pioneers: 1847
Entered the Union as the 45th State: 1896
State Capital: Salt Lake City
Area in Square Miles: 84,916
Population Approximately: 1,200,000

This lovely map card was sent to me on December 17 2009 but arrived only the other day.  Whether it was the weather or the holidays that delayed it, I don't know.  Probably both.

The name "Beehive State" intrigued me.  There seem to be various reasons for the name: one that it used to be the State of Deseret which translates as the honeybee in the Book of Mormon; secondly because the early Mormon settlers were said to have brought swarms of bees with them; and finally to indicate industry and other values highly regarded by the settlers.

Volendam, Holland

"The potato regatta" is all the information it gives on the back of this card which was sent to me shortly before Christmas, 20 December 2009 to be exact. 

Each April in Volendam, a race is held for sailing barges and clippers.  It is a reminder of the days in the 19th century, in the time of the potato famine, when boats such as these would carry food and potatoes from the Netherlands and continental Europe to Ireland and Scotland.  It became something of a competition between the skippers to see how fast they could do the trip.  The present day regatta attracts 40 to 50 of these traditional sailing boats for a weekend of races.

A Viking ship, Pegwell bay

Pegwell Bay in the extreme south east corner of England emerged from the seas something like 80 million years ago, eventually to become a favoured site for the invasion of Britain.  First came the Romans, then the Vikings, and eventually St Augustine, who hailed from Algeria.  Others chose different routes.  We're very used to being invaded in Britain.

This unused card shows a Viking Ship on display in Pegwell Bay.  It's a replica, but it sailed to Kent from Denmark in 1949 to celebrate the invasion of Britain some 1500 years previously.  Interesting question:  how many years does it take to change an invasion from a defeat into a celebration?

The ship is on view all year round, but only from outside the fence.  In winter it has a protective covering.