When Natalia in Saint Petersburg, Russia proposed a postcard swap some weeks ago, I could hardly resist.  In exchange for a handful of postcards promoting social causes, she sent me several beautiful views of her city at night.  Serendipitously, these cards fit in very nicely with Postcardy’s Postcard Scavenger Hunt for July: Night/Lights.

The backs of these cards have large, bold titles in Russian and English, with smaller titles in German, French, Spanish, and Italian.  Then the photo and publisher credits are listed in English and Russian, along with the publisher’s logo.  As you might imagine, and like many Russian cards (and Soviet cards before them), this leaves very little room for any message you might want to send along with the card.

Without further ado, please enjoy these views of Saint Petersburg at night. 

This postcard from Julia in Munich features a bronze statue of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals and the environment.  Almost invariably, he is portrayed with animals, usually doves.  I suppose I have seen hundreds of statues of St. Francis, placed everywhere from gardens to animal shelters, and they always delight me.

The name of the statue seems to translate as “Francis as Peace Offerings,” which I’m sure is an accurate transcription, but it isn’t getting the idea across to me.  The only story I know about St. Francis as a peacemaker is the episode involving the Wolf of Gubbio, but I don’t see a specific reference to that story in the statue.

This statue was created by Martin Mayer and is located in Munich on the Sonnenstrasse, which Julia describes as a “touristic pedestrian” area.  She also passed on her favorite quote, which I leave with you as your thought for the day: “Freundlichkeit ist eine sprache die Taube hören und Blinde sehen können (Kindness is a language which the deaf hear and the blind can see).”

This week’s foray into Postcard Friendship Friday brings us to this gift from my postcard friend Eddy, who runs the excellent blog D’hier à aujourd’hui (From Yesterday to Today), which compares postcard images of the France of yesteryear with modern views of the same sites. This card, along with another turn-of-the-century French card, arrived a few days ago, but you get to see only this one today; I will save the other for Bastille Day.

This postcard, postmarked 24 August 1905, shows the top of the Fontaine Carpeaux in Paris’s 6th District.  The four maidens, created by sculptor Jean Baptiste Carpeaux, represent the “four parts of the world”: an African; an American Indian; an Asian; and a Caucasian.  They are posed as if they are turning the celestial sphere, complete with the signs of the zodiac, around the Earth.  Interestingly, the sphere was not created by Carpeaux, but by another sculptor, Pierre Legrain.  The fountain’s pool, not pictured, contains sculptures of horses emerging from the water, which were created by yet another sculptor, Emmanuel Frémiet.  But it is only Carpeaux’s name on the fountain.

The back of this card is even more fascinating:

The card is addressed to Monsieur et Madame Poulain (ancestors of Amelie, perhaps?) at 6 Rue de la Présentation in Paris, which is looking a little worse for wear today.  The message is in an antique hand, and seems to be misspelled and ungrammatical here and there in a language that I don’t speak well, but I believe that it reads something like the following (please feel free to correct me):

All my regrets at not being here yesterday to thank you for your strong support. I charge this card with the deed and will meet both of you for dinner tomorrow night Friday without fail.  I embrace you (both). Yvette.

I guess the modern equivalent is receiving an email that closes with the word “hugs.”  There’s also a postscript in the upper left: “Alice wants(?) me to hug you for her.”  Let us hope that Yvette kept her appointment, gave hugs all around, and didn’t have to send another apology.

This postcard is a souvenir of the famous Manneken Pis statue in Brussels, Belgium. It probably dates back to the 1910s and is printed on some very heavy stock. The back also indicates that it was manufactured in Brussels. It’s somewhat yellowed now — with age, people, not with anything that might have come out of the statue.

It’s my understanding that they do occasionally hook the statue up to a supply of beer and hand out cups of what comes out of the statue to passersby. I’m not sure I would be drinking anything yellow and foamy that came out that way.

A poor quality, divided back postcard from the Photogelatine Engraving Co. Ltd. of Ottawa, probably published around 1930 (although I grant you that it has lasted 80 years fairly unscathed). It was in 1930 that the church in this (at the time) privately-owned park was completed.

To the right you can see the statue of “Evangeline,” the subject of the poem by Longfellow. The poem tells a fictionalized tale of the very real expulsion of Acadians from the Canadian Maritime Provinces — Acadia — between 1755 and 1763 by the British. A great many Acadians wound up in Louisiana, and you have doubtless heard their descendants referred to as “Cajuns”.

The Canadian government acquired the park in 1957, and today it is known as the Grand-Pré National Historical Site.

I purchased this card in Nova Scotia in 2002, in a shop not too far from the park.

This is a large-letter linen postcard, another personal message from Daisy Boyd to Great-Grandma Lottie. It was posted from Spartanburg, South Carolina on May 24, 1953. Daisy writes (typos in the original): “Dear Mrs. Smith. Hope your both feeling fine. We feel some better Mr. Boyd just had to get away with his folks. Haveing nice time picnicks & fishing eaten big ones. Will see you all some time this summer. Mrs. H. Boyd.”

From these postcards from Daisy Boyd, it sounds as if Homer (Mr. Boyd) used to love to leave Pennsylvania on a moment’s notice and go see the old folks down in South Cackalacky.

This card was sent to me by my friend Sue Eagan, from one of her many jaunts across Europe. It made it from Prague, Czech Republic to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA relatively unscathed. Plus, it has a really cool stamp attached.