A Postcard A Day - Friday 8 January 2021 - Friday Smiles

Hello lovely ladies,

A happy New Year to you all!  This is my first Friday Smile blog post in 2021. I have missed quite a few, so this might become a tad long. (Of course you don't have to read it all)

I’m late as we have no internet due to bad weather. I’m doing this on my phone and it’s taking ages. Luckily I already uploaded all the photos yesterday. 

Let me start with my postcard. I received this one in November from Antje in Germany. It shows the World Heritage Sites in Germany.

There are eight extraordinary sites, each of them with their own beauty. I would like to mention them all. (All info from Wikipedia.) Here they are:

The first is the Wadden Sea in the north of the country. It  is an intertidal zone in the southeastern part of the North Sea. It lies between the coast of northwestern continental Europe and the range of low-lying Frisian Islands, forming a shallow body of water with tidal flats and wetlands. It has a high biological diversity and is an important area for both breeding and migrating birds. In 2009, the Dutch and German parts of the Wadden Sea were inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List and the Danish part was added in June 2014.

(Photo Ralf Roletschek)

Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe is a transnational composite nature UNESCO World Heritage site, encompassing forests in 12 European countries.  The Ancient Beech Forests of Germany include five locations, cover 4,391 hectares and were added in 2011.

Nationalpark Hainich, Thüringen. (photo: Fritz Geller-Grimm) Canopy walkway.

The Fagus Factory (German: Fagus Fabrik or Fagus Werk), a shoe last factory in Alfeld on the Leine, Lower Saxony, Germany, is an important example of early modern architecture. Commissioned by owner Carl Benscheidt who wanted a radical structure to express the company's break from the past, the factory was designed by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer. It was constructed between 1911 and 1913, with additions and interiors completed in 1925.

(Photo: Carsten Janssen)

Prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps are a series of prehistoric pile dwelling (or stilt house) settlements in and around the Alps built from about 5000 to 500 B.C. on the edges of lakes, rivers or wetlands. In 2011, 111 sites located variously in Switzerland (56), Italy (19), Germany (18), France (11), Austria (5), and Slovenia (2) were added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site list.

Stone age house 'Schussenried'. (Photo: Ankawue)

The Margravial Opera House (German: Markgräfliches Opernhaus) is a Baroque opera house in the town of Bayreuth, Germany, built between 1745 and 1750. It is one of Europe's few surviving theatres of the period and has been extensively restored.^[1] On 30 June 2012, the opera house was inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

(Photo: Avda)

Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe is a landscape park in Kassel, Germany. The area of the park is 2.4 square kilometres (590 acres), making it the largest European hillside park, and second largest park on a hill slope in the world. Construction of the Bergpark, or "mountain park", began in 1689 at the behest of the Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel and took about 150 years. The park is open to the public today. Since 2013, it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

(Photo: Dirk Schmidt)

The Princely Abbey of Corvey (German: Fürststift Corvey or Fürstabtei Corvey) is a former Benedictine abbey and ecclesiastical principality now in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was one of the half-dozen self-ruling princely abbeys of the Holy Roman Empire from the late Middle Ages until 1792 when Corvey was elevated to a prince-bishopric. Corvey, whose territory extended over a vast area, was in turn secularized in 1803 in the course of the German mediatisation and absorbed into the newly created Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda. In 2014, the former abbey church was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

(Photo: Aeggy)

Speicherstadt and the adjacent Kontorhaus district are two densely built urban areas in the centre of the port city of Hamburg. Speicherstadt, originally developed on a group of narrow islands in the Elbe River between 1885 and 1927, was partly rebuilt from 1949 to 1967. It is one of the largest coherent historic ensembles of port warehouses in the world (300,000 m2). It includes 15 very large warehouse blocks as well as six ancillary buildings and a connecting network of short canals. Adjacent to the modernist Chilehaus office building, the Kontorhaus district is an area of over five hectares featuring six very large office complexes built from the 1920s to the 1940s to house port-related businesses. The complex exemplifies the effects of the rapid growth in international trade in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The stamp is beautiful. It is from a series called Deutschland von oben (Germany from above), 

and this particular one shows the swimming pool in Witten:

So, what have we been up to? We have traveled to the Netherlands to be with my 96 year old mum. It was all very strange: near deserted airports, empty stations, eerie....

I did a lot of cooking for my mum (who is practically blind) and made lots of little portions to go in the freezer.

I would do the cooking and mum and hubby would do the washing up.

We were officially quarantined, but we did go shopping as of course we needed to eat. (and the lady that normally does mum's shopping was away). The market (on Wednesday) and the supermarket are just outside mum's building.

I made a traditional Dutch appeltaart (which mum taught me to make) and for New Year's Eve I made a potato salad with beetroot. 

On Sunday we realized we didn't have dessert, so a quick trip to the supermarket sorted that out.

On Monday we had to travel into town to be Covid tested. This must be done within 72 hours of flying back to Spain.

Our tests were negative (phew!) and we could fly after filling in loads of forms only to get the coveted QR-code to re-enter Spain.

Hubby had been ill since before going to Holland. He had an upset tummy and we thought it was a tummy bug that would sort itself out, but it didn't and he didn't enjoy the stay as much as he would normally. We went to the doctor as soon as we got home (yesterday) and we could be seen that morning. It wasn't worth going back home, so we went to the bar to have breakfast.

He now has antibiotics and painkillers, stomach protectors and a few other things. Plus an appointment to have bloods done.

Now you are all up to date. Sorry this is rather long. 

I will go and link up with Annie at A Stitch In Time and with Virginia at Rocking Your World Friday.

Of course I will show you some funnies I have collected along the way at the end of this post. The last two are not funnies but things I liked. 

Have a lovely weekend and a good week ahead.

Stay safe,

Hugs,

Lisca

PS For those who don't live in the UK: Lockdown restrictions are divided into four tiers. Tier 4 being the most severe restrictions. And a 'bubble' is a support network which links two households.

A very curious mind has collected these twigs and has called them "Nature dancing".