Registered cover from the Czech Republic no. 4

Received today a registered letter sent from Říčany near Prague, from a lady with whom I won some stamps in an online auction, who was kind enough to use commemorative stamps on her letter to me (unfortunately, even philatelists these days prefer in quite a large number not to bother with stamps and leave the task of marking the postage to post-office clerks who will always resort to using those handy but ugly stickers, which is used here only to complement the postage and show the registered number).

Well, of these two commemoratives, one has already been commented upon in these pages (the 17 Kč stamp with a tab celebrating the past and not very successful Czech Chairmanship of the EU, issued on 25 November 2008). The 12 Kč portrait stamp (issued on 18 June 2008, 2 million copies) has a special significance for me, since the man depicted in it, geologist/traveller/explorer Ferdinand Stolička (1838-1874), was born within a stone's throw from where I live, in the middle of a forest, in a cottage of a gamekeeper, now standing on the edge of a frequented cyclepath. A street parallel to ours even bears his name. After studying in Vienna, Stolička mapped the Eastern Alps and Dalmatia, and as a paleontologist of the Indian Geological Institute he researched the Himalayas and the Karakoram. The other stamp in the last year's series shows orientalist and geographer Alois Musil (1868-1944).