Sea of Galilee, Israel

Staying by water areas... Isn't this a gorgeous sunrise?!



I find the name of this area quite confusing... In English it's called the Sea of Galilee, but it's not really sea, it's a freshwater area! It's also known as Lake of Gennesaret, Lake Kinneret, Sea of Tiberias or Tiberias Lake. How can 'lake' and 'sea' be used so interchangeably?? I'll use 'Sea of Galilee' here for clarity's sake.

The Sea of Galilee, located near the Golan Heights, is the largest freshwater lake in Israel, and it is approximately 53 km in circumference, about 21 km long, and 13 km wide. The lake has a total area of 166 km², and a maximum depth of approximately 43 m. At 209 metres below sea level, it is the lowest freshwater lake on Earth and the second-lowest lake in the world (after the Dead Sea, a saltwater lake). The lake is fed partly by underground springs although its main source is the Jordan River which flows through it from north to south.



The smaller stamp is from a set of 4 stamps issued in 2003, representing National symbols, this one here being The Menorah (Candlestick). The second stamp is from a set of 2 stamps issued in 2008, commemorating 60 Years of Friendship between Israel and France.

Burgas, Bulgaria

I'm not very good at geography, although I do think I'm better than my boyfriend's sister who was asking yesterday if Kenya was in Europe (!!!). I did wonder if she was joking... Anyway, I've only just realised that Bulgaria is Turkey's neighbour so I thought it'd be appropriate to post this card next.



It's from a RR on the postcrossing forum, the theme was lighthouses. It took me a while to realise that, but there really is a lighthouse in this card, right at the front. I don't know why, but I was always under the impression that lighthouses were built in fairly remote locations, and this doesn't seem particularly remote to me... Guess I should find out more about that at some point...

Burgas is the second-largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast with population 210,260. It is also the fourth-largest by population in the country, after Sofia, Plovdiv and Varna. It is the capital of Burgas Province and an important industrial, transport, cultural and tourist centre.

Surrounded by the coastal Burgas Lakes and located at the westernmost point of the Black Sea, the large Burgas Bay, Burgas has the largest and most important Bulgarian port. Today, it is a key economic, cultural and tourist centre of southeastern Bulgaria, with the Burgas Airport serving the resorts of the southern Bulgarian coast.



I couldn't find any info about the smaller stamp, but the bigger one is from a set of 2 stamps issued in 2008 with the theme "120 Years of Orient Express".

Sümela Monastery, Turkey

One more official for today... This one comes from Turkey.


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Why are so many monasteries located in such strange places? I'm guessing the inaccessible/hard to reach locations are intentional, though...?!

The Sümela Monastery stands at the foot of a steep cliff facing the Altındere valley in the region of Maçka in Trabzon Province, modern Turkey. Lying at an altitude of approximately 1200 metres, it is a major tourist attraction of Altındere National Park. Founded in the year 386 AD during the reign of the Emperor Theodosius I (375 - 395), legend has it that two priests undertook the founding of the monastery on the site after having discovered a miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary in a cave on the mountain.

During its long history, the monastery fell into ruin several times and was restored by various Emperors. Today the monastery's primary function is as a tourist attraction. Its place overlooking the forests and streams below, make it extremely popular for its aesthetic attraction as well as for its cultural and religious significance. Currently restoration works funded by the Turkish government are taking place.



The stamps are from a set of 10 stamps issued in 2009, depicting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Warsaw, Poland

Another gorgeous official, this time from Poland.


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I've already written about the Warsaw Old Town in this blog so I'm not going to repeat myself. I just HAD to post this card as I absolutely adore it. The atmosphere is great - I love the blue tones and the lights from the buildings. And there's a full moon! The picture looks like it could be from decades ago, very timeless.

It's such a fun card on the back, too, with lots of writing and a nice message, and some super cute drawings (including one of a squirrel! ^_^). I wish I could draw that well, too...



The stamp is from 2001, representing Farms.

Marseille, France

I'm still a bit behind with postcrossing due to Aikido Summer School, I'm slowly trying to catch up. I've received a bunch of lovely officials recently and it's difficult to choose which ones to post here. I have a soft spot for panoramic postcards so this one was a pretty obvious choice.


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This is a panoramic view from the Major, to St Jean and St Nicolas forts and Notre Dame de la Garde.

Marseille is the second most-populous city in France (behind Paris), with 852,395 residents as of 2007. It forms the third-largest urban area after those of Paris and Lyon with a population of 1,420,000. Located on the south east coast of France on the Mediterranean Sea, Marseille is France's largest commercial port. Marseille is the administrative capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region.



The stamps are from a set of 12 food-related stamps issued earlier this year. These ones show Tarte Tatin and Chapon.

Dublin, Ireland

Let's move on... From Tuvalu to somewhere far less exotic and sunny: Ireland. This postcard came from the UK & Ireland RR and is very pretty, I particularly love the colourful doors.



These are Georgian Houses in Dublin. They certainly look very nice! I love the way the house on the right is so well covered by some green plant. I remember a house like that in the town where my grandmother lives, I've always wondered how it would be like to live behind a plant curtain like that. ;)



The stamp is gorgeous! It's from a set of 6 stamps issued earlier this month, representing Irish Fashion Designers. This one is Philip Treacy (well, don't know who the woman is, some model?? :P).

Funafala lagoon side beach, Funafuti, Tuvalu

Now this is something rather different... I never expected I'd receive a postcard from Tuvalu! Not that I really knew anything of the place before now...


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The postcard is from the Earth Day 2010 Project, a collaboration between postcrossing and students from Tuvalu. I did comment there so I guess I should've guessed I might eventually receive a card, but I never thought it'd work this way and the UK isn't exactly a rare country with only a few postcrossers, so... I'm very pleased :)

Due to global warming and the rising of sea-level, there are predictions that in the next 50 years the entire population will have to be evacuated. The ocean can swallow Tuvalu whole, making it the first country to be wiped off the map by climate change. This project is to help spread their word about how important it is to reflect and act upon climate change. The project is called "Send Tuvalu to the world" and consists on sending 422 postcards to all over the world sharing their thoughts about Tuvalu. The students organized a painting contest to draw a special stamp to be used in all the postcards, so these are very special indeed.

The view on the card is so beautiful, and there is a cute drawing of an island with palm trees, and a turtle and the sun, drawn by a child named Kashmir. So sweet!



And here is the special stamp!

landmarks

The Aikido Summer School in Birmingham finished a few days ago. It went really well and for the most part I really quite enjoyed it. I passed my blue belt grading and even got the "Most outstanding female aikidoist of the year" award! I'm still a little dumbfounded by that, I never thought I'd ever get anything like that! It's such an honour.

The postcard here is a sort of landmark, too: it's my 1,000th official received postcrossing postcard! A really nice one, too, with a lovely message at the back.


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The photograph was taken by Steve McCurry and shows a man in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Steve McCurry (born February 24, 1950) is an American photojournalist best known for his photograph, "Afghan Girl" that originally appeared in National Geographic magazine. There is actually an exhibition of his photographs going on in Birmingham at the moment, I really want to check it out at some point. I've seen a few of McCurry's photographs and really like them, he's got a talent at capturing emotions in his photographs.



The stamp is from a set of 4 stamps issued in 2009, depicting Endangered or Extinct Species. This one here is the Aurochs.

The National Library of Finland

Moving on... No more beaches for today. :P I love spending time in libraries and I have to say that generally speaking, Finnish libraries seem a lot better than English ones. They tend to be bigger and maintained better, and most of the services are free. Borrowing books is still free in England (or at least in Wolverhampton and Dudley it is) but you have to pay if you want to borrow cds, dvds or other things like that, which tends to be free in Finland. Well, at least the selection of books in English is better here. ;)



I received this gorgeous postcard from the Finnish Summer RR on the postcrossing forum. It's been such a fun RR so far and I've received a lot of great cards.

The National Library of Finland (Finnish: Kansalliskirjasto, Swedish: Nationalbibliotek) is the foremost research library in Finland. Organizatorily, the library is part of the University of Helsinki. Until 1 August 2006, it was known as the Library of the University of Helsinki.

In addition to being the most important of the libraries of the University of Helsinki, the National Library is responsible for storing the Finnish cultural heritage. By Finnish law, the National Library is entitled to receive five copies of all matter printed in Finland. These copies are then distributed by the Library to its own national collection and to reserve collections of four other university libraries. In addition, the National Library has the right to store in to its collection any material published on the Internet.

Any person domiciled in Finland may register as a user of the National Library, and after this, borrow library material for home use. The publications in the national collection, however, are not loaned outside the library. The library contains one of the most comprehensive collections of books published in the Russian Empire of any library in the world.

The National Library is located in a library complex in the heart of Helsinki, right by Senaatintori square. The oldest part of the complex, designed by Carl Ludvig Engel, dates back to 1844. The newer extension Rotunda dates to 1903. The bulk of the collection is, nonetheless, stored in Kirjaluola (Finnish for Bookcave), a 57,600-cubic-metre underground bunker drilled into solid rock, 18 metres below the library.

Anapa, Russia

Okay... Since today's theme seems to be "beautiful sceneries", here's one more card to add to this theme. If you couldn't see the text at the bottom, would you guess the card shows a place in Russia? I know I wouldn't; it looks more like somewhere in the Mediterranean area!



...but it IS definitely in Russia. I can't read Russian but there's a helpful English explanation on the back of the card.

Anapa is a town in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, located on the northern coast of the Black Sea near the Sea of Azov. It had a population of 53,493 in 2002. It boasts a number of sanatoria and hotels; along with Sochi and several other cities along the Russian coast of the Black Sea, it has enjoyed a substantial increase in popularity since the fall of the Soviet Union, which left traditional Soviet resort cities in Crimea and the breakaway republic of Abkhazia in Georgia on the other side of a national border.

Anapa, like the other Black Sea coast resorts, has a superb sunny summer climate. Anapa shows beautiful (and mostly sandy) beaches. However, Anapa seldom attracts vacation-goers from outside Russia due to its modest infrastructure and its inconvenient accessibility from Western Europe via Moscow or Krasnodar.



The bigger stamp is from the Europa series, this year's theme being Children's Books and this is the Russian contribution to the series. The stamp in the middle is from a set of 2 stamps issued in 2009, depicting Symbol of St Petersburg. This one here is the Ship of Admiralty steeple. The stamp on the left is from a set of 15 definitive stamps issued in 2008, showing animals, this one here being the Elk.

There was something else on the card that made me shake my head... The postman/mail sorter/whoever has scribbled "NOT xxx Street" on the card. There's a street with that name in my town, I live on the ROAD with the same name. How difficult is it to tell them apart, especially when the postcodes are different and the sender's handwriting is very clear?! *facepalm* This has happened before but I still can't quite understand it.

Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Moving on to another gorgeous location, Vietnam. I've seen so many wonderful postcards from there but haven't received too many unfortunately... This one came from a swap (and is actually NOT from Jo, who seems to send out most postcrossing cards from Vietnam).



This postcard shows Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a popular travel destination, located in Quảng Ninh province, Vietnam. The bay features thousands of limestone karsts and isles in various sizes and shapes. Ha Long Bay is a center of a larger zone which includes Bái Tử Long bay to the northeast, and Cát Bà islands to the southwest. These larger zones share similar geological, geographical, geomorphological, climate, and cultural characters.

Ha Long Bay has an area of around 1,553km2, including 1,960 islets, most of which are limestone. The core of the bay has an area of 334km2 with a high density of 775 islets. The limestone in this bay has gone through 500 million years of formation in different conditions and environments. The evolution of the karst in this bay has taken 20 million years under the impact of the tropical wet climate. The geo-diversity of the environment in the area has created biodiversity, including a tropical evergreen biosystem, oceanic and sea shore biosystem. Ha Long Bay is home to 14 endemic floral species and 60 endemic faunal species.

Historical research surveys have shown the presence of prehistorical human beings in this area tens of thousands years ago. The successive ancient cultures are the Soi Nhụ culture around 18,000-7,000 BC, the Cái Bèo culture 7,000-5,000 BC and the Hạ Long culture 3,500-5,000 years ago. Ha Long Bay also marked important events in the history of Vietnam with many artifacts found in Bài Thơ Mout, Đầu Gỗ Cave, Bãi Cháy.



The stamp is from a set of 4 stamps issued in 2009, showing Ornamental Fish. This one here is Centropyge flavissima, I have no idea of the possible English name.

Hong Kong

Another country I'd really like to visit one day is Hong Kong. A friend of mine, Miranda, is originally from there, and actually only just got back two days ago from a holiday there (she brought me some Chinese tea, mmmmmm!!). It seems like such a surreal place, completely out of this world and very modern but at the same time it looks like it also has a very old-fashioned, traditional side to it.


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The description on the front of the postcard doesn't make much sense to me... The place looks really beautiful, though, and so different from the views you usually see from Hong Kong.



The stamp is from 2006 from a set of 16 definitives representing birds, this one here being the Red Whiskered Bul Bul.