A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 28 November 2023 - T for statues, a walk and a cake

 Hello lovely girls! How are you all? 

I'm showing you another postcard today:

It comes to me from Germany. Someone called Stefan sent it to me and it is a detail of the Schlossbrücke (Palace Bridge) in Berlin.

I found some information on the website of A View On Ciies. The Schloßbrücke (Palace Bridge) was built in the early 1800s and led to the palace that was located on Museum Island. It is considered the most beautiful out of the numerous bridges in Berlin.

Situated at the eastern end of the Unter den Linden, the Palace Bridge was designed by Berlin’s foremost architect of the early nineteenth century, Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Constructed over a western branch of the Spree River in 1824, the Palace Bridge replaced a wooden structure once known as “The Bridge of Dogs” because hunters gathered there with their animals before setting out on a hunt.

While the Palace Bridge itself is certainly beautiful, it is the artwork that accompanies the bridge that receives the most attention.

Atop the supporting pillars of the bridge are eight groups of figures fashioned from white Carrara marble, all sculpted between the years 1845-57. Eight different sculptors were chosen to create the masterpieces, following designs suggested by Schinkel himself. They show the development of a hero from early youth to manhood, and then to death on the battlefield and the taking of his body to Olympus.

Nike instructs the boy in heroic history – the boy is shown the names of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Frederick the Great (Emil Wolff, 1847).

The second one is the statue on my postcard: Pallas Athena teaches the boy the art of spear-throwing (Hermann Schievelbein, 1853);

The third statue shows  Athena, who arms the warrior for his first battle (Heinrich Möller, 1846-50);

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   Nike crowns the warrior (Friedrich Drake, 1857):

 the 5th statue the goddess Nike supporting a wounded warrior (Ludwig Wichmann, pre-1857));

But the sixth one is  Pallas Athena who leads the warrior in battle (Albert Wolff, 1853); 

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• The seventh shows The hero attacks the enemy, protected by Pallas Athena by his side (Gustav Bläser, 1854);
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• I have also got a photo of the last one (number 8) It is Iris, carrying the fallen hero to Mount Olympus (August Wredow, 1841-57).

The bridge was destroyed during the Second World War, but fortunately the statues had been dismantled and stored in a depot. After the war and the division of Berlin, the bridge ended up in East Berlin. The East German government had the bridge, which was renamed Marx-Engels-Brücke, restored in 1950 but without the statues, since the storage depot for the statues was located in West Berlin.

It wasn’t until 1981 before the statues were handed over in a deal between East and West. A renovation project was undertaken and by 1984, repairs were complete, and the figures were returned to their rightful places.

The stamp features the Überseequartier metro station:

Wikipedia says: Überseequartier is a station on the Hamburg U-Bahn line U4. The station was opened in November 2012  and is located in the Hamburg quarter of HafenCity, Germany. HafenCity is part of the borough of Hamburg-Mitte. The station code is "UR".

The stop was designed by the Netzwerkarchitekten architecture studio from Darmstadt. The walls are clad in blue ceramic-coated glass tiles that get darker the further down they go, recalling the undersea world. Silver-colored plates on the ceiling give the impression of a water surface. This underwater theme ties in nicely with the fact that the neighborhood is next to the harbor, and with the name of the stop, which translates as "Overseas Quarter", where the overseas part would provide the seafaring theme, and a playful interpretation of "over-seas" could see the neighborhood as over the sea and the metro station as below it and hence underwater...

The underwater impression is heightened by a sound installation where speakers broadcast underwater sounds such as waves and other marine noises, acoustically amplifying the visual impression.

What have I been doing?

On Saturday the local Women's Association organised a walk to highlight the fight against domestic violence. 

We put flowers by a small sculpture erected to remember Mery, a local woman who was killed by her husband.

At the end of the 5 km walk, we stopped by a small garden where we planted a conifer

and lots of winter pansies.

The flower bed laid out as a ribbon. And there was also a bench:

On Sunday, my Dutch friend Maaike came with me to my church:

She was lucky as after the service we had a little celebration: One of our ladies was retiring and had brought a cake.

We all had a piece and there were fruit juices too.

I should really have photographed the drinks as today is T for Tuesday, hosted by Elizabeth and Bluebeard. But I forgot, so here is a coffee (from last week):

I'll leave you with this one:

I collected a large parcel from the post office. I had to take the car as it was so big that I couldn't carry it home. What is it? I will tell you on Friday...

That's it. 

Happy T-Day all,

Hugs,

Lisca

 

A PostcardA Day - Friday 24 November 2023 - Friday Smiles

 Hello lovely ladies,

I apologise for not adding the funnies at the end of my blog post last week. I completelty forgot. I had them ready, but somehow forgot. Very worrying. Is this the start of dementia? I hope not and will try not to forget again.

As per usual I will start with a postcard:

It was sent to me from Milwaukee, USA. It celebrates World Postcard Day which happens to be on the first of October. 

The back of the card has a lovely orange gerbera flower stamp and some stickers:

It was sent by Joan, who tells me that she has visited the Netherlands when her daughter went there for a baton twirling competition. Her team came first.

Today I'm joining Annie again at A Stitch In Time, where it is all about the things that made us smile this week. 

Let me tell you about my week. And what things made me smile. Friday I was very excited as I went to pick up my new spectacles. They really are a bit more turquoise:

You will see a picture of me wearing them a bit further down. I really like them and how I look.

On Saturday I went to a birthday party. My friend's daughter was three years old. I put photos on my Tuesday blog. Here is just one photo of some children riding the donkey. (The family have two donkeys).

You can tell by the long shadows that it was towards the evening. The children were tired and so they decided to give them all a donkey ride before going home.

On Sunday I went to church and as the weather was lovely I also went for a walk after dinner. I saw prickly pears along the road:

It is so lovely to see them thriving again after a pest killed 90% of all prickly pears in our area.

This is what most of them looked like a few years ago:

The photo is from the internet. That same website writes the following about the pest:

The Cochinilla del Carmin is a well-established pest in the hotter areas of the Spanish coastline, slowly destroying the emblematic prickly pears which form part of the traditional Spanish landscape. These were cultivated for food, acted as hedges and also had important medicinal applications, and their presence is a sure sign of human habitation, many country fincas surrounded by great banks of prickly pear.

On Monday I didn't go to Pilates because my car was being repaired. Nothing serious. One of my rear parking cameras had become dislodged, and wasn't working. It resulted in a lot of annoying beeps each time I reversed and of course no view. One of my friends had established (by lying on the ground) that the camera was actually still there but it was dangling behind the bumper. Anyway, that is now repaired. Great. Big smile. No more unnecessary beeps. It was driving me mad.

On Tuesday Kim and Andy came to lunch. And we had several errands to run too, so they picked me up from the gym and we did all the things we needed to do. One of the things I needed to do is order a stone for Graham's columbarium (= a niche for his ashes). I have ordered it and Andy has helped with the photo, as I want his photo on it. They told me it would be ready before the 14th of December, which would have been his birthday.

On Wednesday I did go to Pilates, and in the afternoon I sorted out my jewelry box, especially my earrings. There were earrings without the back stud thingy, I matched all the earrings and then cleaned them in one of those ultrasonic cleaners:

Everything is nice and clean now, so another smile.

In the evening my Dutch friend Maaike invited me for a drink, and we had a lovely catch-up.

We asked the waitress to take the picture. We are both smiling as you can see.

This morning (Thursday) I went to the gym again and when I walked back I saw that council workers were erecting Christmas illuminations:

And also the by now familiar pointed Christmas tree:

Ok, that is it from me for today. I will put some funnies at the end, and again, I'm sorry I forgot last week.

Have a lovely weekend,

Hugs,

Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 21 November 2023 - T for trainers, spectacles and a birthday party.

 Hello lovely girls, here we are again on Tuesday, ready to join the so-called T-Gang for the T-Party hosted by Bluebeard and Elizabeth.  All that is needed is a beverage of sorts (or a reference to a drink). You will see mine a little later, but first I want to show you my postcard for the day:

It arrived this week all the way from Moscow. There wasn't much room for the sender to write anything on it (as you will see later)

There is a lot of fun information about Moscow as well as a beautiful sunset sky. 

This is the back of the card. (Hardly any room for the address). The stamps are stunning:

Three different ones about lace making. Right up my street!

The stamp on the left looks like this:

And is Vologda lace, a bobbin lace made in Vologda Oblast.

Vologda lace is a unique type of decoration in the Russian folk art that impresses with the richness and variety of its lines, ornaments, and patterns.

At one of my lace making residential courses in the UK, I learnt a bit of this lacemaking.

The middle stamp:

This is an example of Yelets lace, a bobbin lace made in Yelets town, Lipetsk Oblast.

Yelets laces became known in Russia since the end of the XVIII century: Yelets became one of the first centers where Russian traditional lace craftsmanship has arisen. Yelets weaving is unique and labor-consuming craftsmanship: for example, lace makers have spent more than four month for the creation of the dress which has appeared in Ulyana Sergeenko Spring-Summer 2016 Couture collection.

The purple one on the right is The Vyatka lace, a bobbin lace made in Kirov Oblast, the centre of the handcraft is in Sovetsk town.

Here is an example of Vyatka lace:

The line at the bottom reads (according to Google Translate):

I haven't been able to do any lace making for many years. I wish I could find a teacher , then I would love to start doing it again.

But what I have been doing is spending money.  I've bought a pair of Sketchers (trainers) and I also have new spectacles.

A selfie in the mirror to show you my new glasses. They are turquoise, although they look darker. In the light they are almost transparent, quite pretty (I think).

I also did some socialising. I was invited to the 3rd birthday party of Saba, my friend Maria's little girl. 

You might remember I went to see her and her family in Sardinia, back in June. Now she is here in Caniles for a little while.

In Sardinia I had lovely cuddles with her other child, Atlas, who was only a few weeks old then. Well, he is a few months older now and I had more cuddles:

He is so gorgeous.

Here I am with my Dutch friend Maaike:

Maaike is a farmer (In the Netherlands) and a crafter. She does beautiful things with felt.(https://www.instagram.com/eco_maaike/?hl=en).

Maria and her sister had prepared quite a spread:

Of course the newly 3-yr old had a cake 

and some candles to blow out:

Of course as this is T for Tuesday, There should be some drinks. Yes, looking back at the photos, there are wine bottles and thermos bottles and goodness what else visible. 

I'm going to leave at this. 

Happy T-Day all!

Hugs,

Lisca