Postcard from Slovenia no. 3

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When we were returning from our holiday in Croatia this June, we spent a few hours in and around the Predjama Castle in Slovenia. A really impressive building set against a huge rock cavity, part castle, part rock hideout, it's a great place to visit especially since one is free to roam the premises and does not have to follow a guide. At the entrance, in a souvenir shop, we bough a few cards and a few copies of the only stamp available which, as I only later learned, is custom made/personalised and sold only at the castle and at the Postojnska Jama Cave some ten kilometers away (the castle and the cave are connected by an underground passage and also as tourist attractions). The C-rate personalised stamp was issued in 2008 to commemorate the 190th anniversary of the factual discovery of the cave system at Postojna.

We had also a great lunch at a medieval restaurant there with typical Slovenian dishes, and left a baby sweater lying on a bench there:)

Cover from Austria no. 3

On 22 April 2009 I received this very special cover from Austria. At first it was a mystery for me, but after some detective work I've found out that the larger yellow stamp is a "meine Marke", personalised stamp ordered with the Austrian Post. It was issued on 7 April 2009 in 100(!) pieces and it commemorates the 300th anniversary of postal service in Poysdorf in Lower Austria, a town close to the border with the Czech Republic which I've visited on a couple of occasions. Besides the stamp (and a nice definitive from 2003 showing Worthersee in Carinthia), there is a special cancellation of 18 April 2009 commemorating the same event and a special delivery with a "postbus". The only remaining mystery is the postmark of Poysbrunn, a village near Poysdorf, but I assume it was one of the stops of the postbus...

Florian, thank you very much!!!