18. St Petersburg
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| Church of the Savior on Blood, 1883-1907. |
Not longer before this beauty came to my letter-box, the sender contacted me very worried because she had sent this postcard to me and I hadn't received yet. I had to explain to her that Spain-Russia post takes longer than expected. A few days after I had assure the lady her postcard will arrive in here, I had it in my box. Oh how beautiful! ♥
That would be just one of my love-hate stories with postcards and Russia... I don't know why does it happen. I suppose it's a language issue, Latin and Cyrillic alphabets and so. It happens with China too. (Funny enough, no problem till today with Greece or Japan).
I was amazed at this building and its colours. In Spain, we have the colours of nature surrounding us all year around so our buildings are plain stone, sober or intrincate, but bare. On the contrary, Northern countries have to mitigate many months of snow and cold with warm and richly coloured architecture.
Built between 1883 and 1907, it never served as a place of worship. It was closed by the Soviet government in 1930 (after it had been badly damaged and looted during the Revolution) and reopened in August 1997, after 27 years of restoration. Nowadays it is a Museum of Mosaics.
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| Volkonskiy Dolmen |
On the flip side, there was this 30 R stamp from 2011 commemorating Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games. My first Olympics related stamp! According to the stamps sheet,
Volkonskiy Dolmen is a unique megalithic landmark located in Lazarevskoye forestry of the Sochi National Park. It is the only surviving monolithic dolmen in the Caucasus and it is protected by the state.
Postcard from: St. Petersburg, Russia.
Received: March 2012.
Language: English & Russian.
Envelope: no.
Stamps: one 30 R with Volkonskiy Dolmen (2011).
Спасибо Elena!
{RU-787157}
8 postmarks
This is not fair, I tried commentign twice now but just get an error message. I'm jealous of the Russian card, it's really beautiful and I didn't recieve any postcard this week. My postbox stayed empty.
ReplyDeleteYesterday blogger and other sites didn't work for me either. Don't worry, your postbox won't be empty much longer!
DeleteThis card is a beauty indeed! It was worth waiting.
ReplyDeleteI have the same problem to receive cards from Russia, average 29 days.
Thanks for visiting my blog!
Mine to Russia often takes 40 days. This one took 31. But indeed, it was worth waiting.
DeleteReally wonderful! I love it!
ReplyDeleteEs preciosa ¿verdad?
DeleteI recently received a postcard of Red Square and thought St Basil's was sort of unique but now I see that the architecture must be special to Russia and there are many more examples of it. Lovely! And it takes a long time for cards to travel from Russia-US (and US-Russia) as well!
ReplyDeleteThose were exactly my thoughts about Russia -- St. Basil's & Kremlin being unique. Now we know they are just one in a million! Probably the best widely known but at the moment, my favourite Russian church is this one in St. Petersburg. Simply gorgeous.
Delete