A Postcard A Day - Friday 15 July 2022 - Friday Smiles

 Hello lovely people,

Have you got a lot to smile about? Not much? Then I advise you to actively think and find  those positive things and moments. They are there but sometimes they are overshadowed by the situation. Count your blessings as they say. Find things to be thankful for. 

That's what we do. Today we are thankful that we have finally got a date for hubby's operation. It's going ahead on Tuesday the 19th of July. That is to say: this coming Tuesday. There still is one TAC scan to do this morning, but if that doesn't throw up any problems, we're good to go.

The operation will take place in the main teaching hospital in Granada. We have booked into a nice hotel near the hospital from Sunday night, and he has to be in admission Tuesday at 7:30 in the morning. The operation wil be that same morning. I am both nervous and excited.

My postcard this morning is something funny on a postcard:

This is a building in the city of Prague in the Czech republic. It's called The Dancing House. Of course I went to Wikipedia to get a bit more info:

The Dancing House, or Fred and Ginger, is the nickname given to the Nationale-Nederlanden building on the Rašín Embankment in Prague, Czech Republic. It was designed by the Croatian-Czech architect Vlado Milunić in cooperation with Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry on a vacant riverfront plot. The building was designed in 1992. The construction was completed four years later in 1996.

Gehry originally called the house Fred and Ginger (after the dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers – the house resembles a pair of dancers) but this nickname is now rarely used. Gehry himself later discarded his own idea, as he was "afraid to import American Hollywood kitsch to Prague".

Here is another picture in better weather:

The "Dancing House" is set on a property of great historical significance. Its site was the location of a house destroyed by the U.S. bombing of Prague in 1945. 

The plot and structure lay decrepit until 1960, when the area was cleared. The neighboring plot was co-owned by the family of Václav Havel, who spent most of his life there. As early as 1986 (during the Communist era), Vlado Milunić, then a respected architect in the Czechoslovak milieu, conceived an idea for a project at the place and discussed it with his neighbour, the then little-known dissident Václav Havel. A few years later, during the Velvet Revolution, Havel became a popular leader and was subsequently elected president of Czechoslovakia. Thanks to his authority, the idea to develop the site grew. Havel eventually decided to have Milunić survey the site, hoping for it to become a cultural center, though this was not the result.

The Dutch insurance company Nationale-Nederlanden (ING Bank from 1991 to 2016) agreed to sponsor the construction of a house on site. The "superbank" chose Milunić as the lead designer and asked him to partner with another world-renowned architect to approach the process. The French architect Jean Nouvel turned down the idea because of the small square footage, but the Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry accepted the invitation. Because of the bank's excellent financial state at the time, it was able to offer almost unlimited funding for the project.^[4] Starting with their first meeting in 1992 in Geneva, Gehry and Milunić began to develop Milunić's original idea of a building consisting of two parts, static and dynamic ("yin and yang"), which were to symbolize the transition of Czechoslovakia from a communist regime to a parliamentary democracy.

The famous dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are represented in the structure. A tower made of rock is used to represent Fred. This tower also includes a metal head. A tower made of glass is used to represent Ginger

The stamps are very colorful:

The modern building top left is a transmitter cum hotel.

The hotel and TV transmitter on Ještěd is a building in the shape of a one-part rotating hyperboloid , built between 1966  and 1973  on the top of the Ještěd mountain near  Liberec .

 It is almost 100 meters high with a circular plan with a diameter of 33 meters. Its author is the architect Karel Hubáček , who was assisted with the statics of the building by Zdeněk Patrman and with the equipment of the interior spaces by Otakar Binar. 

Before the construction of the current hotel, a hotel stood on top of the mountain from the mid-19th century, near which another one was built at the beginning of the 20th century, taking into account the interest of tourists. The buildings were made of wood and both burned down in the 1960s.

The other stamp features the Karlstein castle. 

Karlštejn Castle  is a large Gothic castle founded in 1348 by Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor-elect and King of Bohemia. The castle served as a place for safekeeping the Imperial Regalia as well as the Bohemian Crown Jewels, holy relics, and other royal treasures.

The last stamp is a smaller one:

It is the Antonin Dvorak Theatre.

The Antonín Dvořák Theatre is an opera house in Ostrava, Czech Republic, which opened in 1907. Since 1919 it has been one of two permanent venues of the National Moravian Silesian Theatre.

The person that sent this card (Adam), has read my blog and knows I like to research my cards and stamps, so he kindly gave me information on the back of the card so I could look up more details. Thank you Adam!

This week we are tying up loose ends and trying to do as little as possible because of the heat.

I cooked some nice things like Annabel's pasta. 

This is a very old family favorite. Mary Berry created it for her daughter Annabel when she went to university. I've had it for about 25 years (if not longer).

I have it in my personal (old) cook book. Here it is:

I think I've waffled on long enough. Let me get some funnies for you to round it all off and I will see you again next Friday, God willing.

Enjoy your weekend,

Keep smiling,

Hugs,

Lisca

You might have seen some of these before. I have a system but it doesn't always work.