Postcard US-3592467 to Finland shows a great dane with Arundel Castle in the background. A restored and remodeled medieval castle overlooking the River Arun in Arundel, West Sussex, England, the castle was built by Roger de Montgomery at the end of the 11th century. The castle was damaged in the English Civil War and was restored in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Postcard SK-52960 from Slovakia shows Solivar near Prešov, "Saltworks," a branch of the Slovak Technical Museum. Opened in 2001, it focuses on history and technology for boiling and producing of salt.
The card is listed for sale on the museum's site for 0.50 EUR. The building on the right, where salt was cooked, now serves as the main building of the museum. The building on the left, an old repository, was affected by a fire and it is being restored. Dušan Balara has published an aerial video on YouTube showing the restoration in progress.
Postcard US-3118723 to Hong Kong was a 1960 vintage linen postcard showing Lord Baltimore Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland. Designed by William Lee Stoddart in the French Renaissance style, the 22-story 289-feet or 88-meter tall hotel opened on December 30, 1928. The hotel has a brick veneer over a steel frame and a tower featuring a mansard roof of copper on the top.
The Lord Baltimore Hotel was noted for its voluntary ending of its restrictive guest policies in 1958 after the Baltimore City Council's failed attempt to pass an ordinance prohibiting racial segregation in public accommodations.
The original Lord Baltimore Hotel closed in 1982, and re-opened in 2014 as an independent hotel after a series of ownership changes. The hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Under the current ownership of Rubell Hotels of Miami, Florida, it had undergone a total renovation of guest rooms and restoration of the building's public spaces.
Postcard DE-3395051 from Germany shows the Mühlenmuseum, the Mill Museum, in the small neighborhood of Hiesfeld, Dinslaken, Germany. The museum has a watermill and a windmill, serving to show the development of millers' crafts in history. It is one of the 200 museums in the Ruhr District, the largest metropolitan area in Germany.
Surrounded by the beautiful nature, the wind mill was originally built in 1822 at the center of what is now the district of Hiesfeld. The water mill was built close by the Rotbach river in 1693. Both mills have since been restored. The museum also has a collection of over 60 model mills from around the world. The admission is free.
Postcard NL-2104782 from the Netherlands shows restoration of the Zwolle Station with bus and train services, circa. 1954. Zwolle is the capital of the province of Overijssel, the Netherlands. More recently, the station underwent a major renovation in 2000, which resulted in an increased capacity among the effort to overhaul the entire public transportation systems in the city to serve the bus and train passengers better.
Zwolle was built on a hill overlooking four rivers: the IJssel, Vecht, Aa and Zwarte Water. It has a long history dated back to the Bronze Age period while the city as it is now known was founded around 800 A.D. The compact old city was surrounded by a star-shaped moat traversed by the Zwarte Water which means black water.
Map of Zwolle by Joan Blaeu in Blaeu's "Toonneel der Steden", 1652, from Wikipedia
Zwolle residents were known as Blauwvingers
(Bluefingers) from a folk story dated back to 1682 when the St.Michael's church
tower collapsed. The city government was short on cash and had to sell the church bells to neighbouring city Kampen.
However, Kampen residents found out the bells were
too damaged to be played, after agreeing a high price. In revenge, Kampen residents paid in copper coins of
four duiten (the equivalent of 2.5 cents). Distrusting Zwolle people went through a rigorous counting to make sure that they got paid in full. As a result, their fingers had turned blue from the copper after counting this vast amount of coins.
The following video on YouTube shows that Zwolle is really a charming city.
