#2 Plakat Polska Jasna Góra - Częstochowa, Poland

The Black Madonna of Częstochowa (Polish: Czarna Madonna z Częstochowy; Matka Boska Częstochowska) is a venerated icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary housed at the Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa, Poland.

Częstochowa is regarded as the most popular shrine in Poland, with many Polish Catholics making a pilgrimage there every year. Since 1711, a pilgrimage leaves Warsaw every August 6 for the nine-day, 300km trek. 

 

#2 COTW - Tallinn, Estonia

In 2012, Tallinn had the highest number of startup companies per person among all capitals and larger cities in Europe. Tallinn is the birthplace of many international high-technology companies, including Skype and Wise. The city is home to the headquarters of the European Union's IT agency and the NATO Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence. In 2022, Tallinn was listed among the top 10 "medium-sized European cities of the future".

 

Stolzenfels castle in Rheim - Nuremberg, Germany

Stolzenfels Castle is a former medieval fortress castle turned into a palace, near Koblenz on the left bank of the Rhine, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Stolzenfels was a ruined 13th-century castle, gifted to the Prussian crown prince, Frederick William in 1823. He had it rebuilt as a 19th-century palace in the Gothic Revival style. Today, it is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Upper Middle Rhine Valley.

 

#3 MOTW - Helsinki, Finland

The Finns' love for saunas is generally associated with Finnish cultural tradition. Sauna is a type of dry steam bath practised widely in Finland, which is especially evident in the strong tradition around Midsummer and Christmas. The word sauna is of Proto-Finnish origin dating back 7,000 years. 

Steam baths have been part of European tradition elsewhere as well, but the sauna has survived best in Finland, in addition to Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Russia, Norway, and parts of the United States and Canada. Moreover, nearly all Finnish houses have either their own sauna or in multi-story apartment houses, a timeshare sauna. The Finnish sauna culture is inscribed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

 

A colorful illustration - Hangzhou, China

There are several museums located in Hangzhou including China National Silk Museum, the largest silk museum in the world, China National Tea Museum, and Zhejiang Provincial Museum, which has a collection of integrated human studies, exhibitions and research with over 100,000 collected cultural relics.

 

Poppy seed flowers - Odessa, Ukraine

Many of Odesa's buildings have, rather uniquely for a Ukrainian city, been influenced by the Mediterranean style of classical architecture. This is particularly noticeable in buildings built by architects such as the Italian of Odesa Francesco Boffo, who in the early 19th century built a palace and colonnade for the Governor of Odesa, Prince Mikhail Vorontsov, the Potocki Palace and many other public buildings.

 

#82 GF - Torshavn, Faroe Islands

The Norse established their parliament on the Tinganes peninsula in AD 850. Thus, Tórshavn became the Faroe Islands's capital and has remained so ever since. Early on, Tórshavn became the centre of the islands' trade monopoly, thereby being the only legal place for the islanders to sell and buy goods. 

The Tórshavn Jazz Festival has been held annually since 1983. It attracts musicians from North America and Europe and has become a popular tourist event.

EUROPA stamp 1991 - "Space exploration"

 

Ivan Shishkin "The Mast-Tree Grove" 1898 - Istra, Russia

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was a Russian landscape painter closely associated with the Peredvizhniki movement. Ivan Shishkin owned a dacha in Vyra, south of St Petersburg. There he painted some of his finest landscapes. His works are notable for poetic depiction of seasons in the woods, wild nature, animals and birds. In 1891 he was appointed professor-director of the landscape class in the Academy's Advanced Art School. In 1898 he completed his painting The Pine Grove and died on 20 March in St Petersburg while working on his new painting.

 

#77 FOTW - Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

The national flag of Luxembourg consists of three horizontal stripes, red, white and light blue, and can be in a 1:2 or 3:5 ratio. It was first used between 1845 and 1848 and officially adopted in 1993. It is informally called in the country, «rout, wäiß, blo» ("red, white, blue"). The red, white, and light blue colours were derived from the coat of arms of the House of Luxembourg.

 

A pug on a couch - Magong, Taiwan

The island's Mazu temple was erected in the late 16th or early 17th century. The city of Magong'ao began to grow around 1887, during the rule of the Qing dynasty. Under Japanese rule, the settlement was renamed Makō and organized as a subprefecture of Hōko. The area was a major base of the Imperial Japanese Navy. It was an embarkation point for the invasion of the Philippines during the Second World War.

 

Large Letter Reprint - Fort Wayne, Indiana

Nickname: "The Hoosier State"

Motto: "Crossroads of America"

Indiana is America's largest source of sandstone, which was used in the construction of the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, the Pentagon, and 14 state capitols. The first gas station in the world was built in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

 

A summer girl - Odivelas, Portugal

The origin of the name Odivelas is caught up in a peculiar legend that developed from the reign of King Denis. In the legend, King Denis had a habit of travelling late at night to the area of Odivelas, to have liaisons with women. On one of these nights, the Queen (Elizabeth of Portugal) waited for her wandering husband, and confronted him about the nightly trips, asking him: "Ides vê-las senhor...?" (Going to see them, sir?)

The phrase was, therefore, corrupted into Odivelas, or "where the King went to see them [the ladies]". 

 

Greetings from Milano - Milan, Italy

Even though Milan is located in one of the most urbanised regions of Italy, it is surrounded by a belt of green areas and features numerous gardens even in its very centre. The farmlands and woodlands north (Parco Nord Milano since 1975) and south (Parco Agricolo Sud Milano since 1990) of the urban area have been protected as regional parks. West of the city, the Parco delle Cave has been established on a neglected site where gravel and sand used to be extracted, featuring artificial lakes and woods.

 

#81 GF - Hamilton, Bermuda

Bermuda is named after the Spanish sailor Juan de Bermúdez, who discovered the islands in 1505, while sailing for Spain from a provisioning voyage to Hispaniola in the ship La Garça.

In the early 20th century Bermuda became a popular destination for American, Canadian and British tourists arriving by sea. The US Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which enacted protectionist trade tariffs on goods imported into the US, led to the demise of Bermuda's once-thriving agricultural export trade to America and encouraged development of tourism as an alternative source of income. The island was one of the centres for illegal alcohol smuggling during the era of Prohibition in the United States (1920–1933).

 

German beer glasses - Duisburg, Germany

A beer stein is either a traditional beer mug made out of stoneware or specifically an ornamental beer mug sold as a souvenir or collectible. An 1894 article on beer mugs in the American Vogue magazine that describes various types of steins stated: "And it is to this [i.e. German] nation that we owe Wagner's music and the apotheosis of the beer mug."

Such steins may be made out of stoneware, pewter, porcelain or even silver, wood or crystal glass; they may have open tops or hinged pewter lids with a thumb-lever. Steins usually come in sizes of a half litre or a full litre. Like decorative tankards, they are often decorated in a nostalgic manner with allusions to Germany.