Sylvester at the Bottle and Gas, Black Country Living Museum, Dudley, England

A postcard I sent to myself last year as I wanted the UK Year of the Horse stamp cancelled on a postcard. ....and the Royal Mail actually cancelled the stamp! :O

 The Black Country Living Museum isn't too far from where I live. I've been there a couple of times, and I think I've been to this pub as well, although I don't think I had anything to drink... :P My favourite thing there is the fish & chip shop, their fish & chips are lovely, mmmm.. The downside is that a lot of people agree with me so normally you'll have to queue for *at least* half an hour, even after they opened a second chippy due to the demand. :P

The Black Country Living Museum is an open-air museum of rebuilt historic buildings in Dudley in the West Midlands of England. It is close to Dudley Castle in the centre of the Black Country conurbation. The museum occupies 105,000 square metres of former industrial land partly reclaimed from a former railway goods yard, disused lime kilns and former coal pits. It was opened in 1978, since when many more exhibits have been added.

 The museum preserves some important buildings from around the Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall and the City of Wolverhampton; mainly in a specially built village. Most buildings were relocated from their original sites to form a base from where demonstrators portray life in the period from the 1850s to the 1950s.

The museum is constantly changing as new exhibits, especially buildings, are being added.

Moldova

Overall, I don't get a huge variety of different countries with the postcards I receive, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to post about cards from different countries here whenever possible. The following card is definitely one from a country I don't received cards from too often.


MD-2037

The card shows the National History Museum of Moldova, a museum in Chişinău, the capital city of Moldova. Over 263,000 exhibits, 165000 of which belong to the national heritage, are exhibited in the National Museum of History, founded in 1983 on the former Regional Lyceum. It is situated on 121a, 31 August 1989 str., in the historical center of Chişinău.



The stamp is very pretty, but unfortunately I couldn't find any info regarding it. It would seem to be related to the National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History, the oldest museum in Moldova, though.

Dubai Museum

More old cards... This is actually one of my oldest postcrossing swap cards - it's from December 2007! I like it how it's also a slightly different postcard of Dubai in that it doesn't show one of the most famous landmarks (Burj Al Arab?).



Dubai Museum is the main museum in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It is located in the Al Fahidi Fort, built in 1787 and is the oldest existing building in Dubai. The museum was opened by the ruler of Dubai in 1971, with the aim of presenting the traditional way of life in the Emirate of Dubai. The museum houses many exhibits from Dubai's history. There are several static displays showing Dubai life from ages past, including souk, fishing, domestic and desert travel scenes.

Galleries show scenes from the Creek, traditional Arab houses, mosques, the souk, date farms as well as desert and marine life. These galleries reflect the nature of the UAE, from the beach to the city and the oasis areas to the nomadic Bedouin culture.

Artifacts from several excavated sites in Dubai date back to the third millennium B.C. The two main excavated sites in Dubai were discovered in Jumeirah and Al Qusais.



The stamps are from a set of 7 definitives from 2007, called the 5th Definitive Series. The design shows the word "Emirates" in Arabic, shaped as a falcon.

Museum of London

GB-139861

What did I say about receiving postcards from people living outside of their home countries? It seems like that's the theme of the week - I've just had yet another such card! This time it's from a Dutch girl living and studying in London. This is one of the nicest ad cards I've received for a long time. It advertises the Museum of London, opening on 28 May 2010.

This is what the card says about the new museum:

"The spectacular £20 million Galleries of Modern London, opening on 28 May 2010, tell the story of London and its people from 1666 to the present day. Five new galleries and 7,000 objects show how the vibrant and unflagging energy of Londoners has shaped this global city."

It sounds really interesting, it would be nice to visit it one day. You can find out more about the museum here.



The stamp is the standard second class definitive stamp. I don't understand why (most) British stamps have to be so boring. :( On a related note, within the UK you have the option to send mail either by first or second class. First class is slightly more expensive and it's *supposed to* be delivered the day after mailing. This is not quite how it works in reality, however, which is why I only really use first class stamps to mail job applications, or postcards to people who appreciate nice stamps (as nice stamps are not available in 2nd class anymore :/) on their mail. I think it's a waste of money to send normal mail in first class when there's no guarantee it's going to be delivered the following day. Quite often it takes at least as long as second class mail, and earlier this year there was an instance where I sent a postcard to London in first class, but it took a month to arrive! Royal Mail can be such a joke sometimes...

Royal Mail quite often prints messages on cancellations, usually advertising different services or reminding people to write the postcode on their mail. I had no idea what this was about, so I had to check out what this "10:10" means. Apparently it's an environmental project where individuals and organisations are trying to achieve a 10% cut in the UK’s carbon emissions in 2010. I wonder how it's going to work... Surely airmail isn't the most environmental thing to be around, but then there would be no international mail (or it would take weeks or even months to arrive), which would be devastating news for postcrossers (and lots of other people as well - you just can't use email all the time!).