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I didn’t have many postcards from Switzerland until recently. Then Elizabeth (AKA swisscowgirl) sent me three cards from Switzerland and one of my official Postcrossing cards came from Zurich, so now I have a total of five cards from Switzerland! Here are the four that I haven’t previously shown on the blog:
First is the official Postcrossing card. It shows the garden pavilion at the Villa Pathumba in Zurich. It looks like a beautiful place to go sit in the park surrounding the villa.
The next three cards are from swisscowgirl and show the sites from around her home:
First is the fortress of Munot in the city of Schaffhausen. This circular fortress was built in the 16th century and is a symbol of the city. Swisscowgirl writes that the view from the fortress is beautiful but requires climbing a lot of stairs.
Next is the city of Schaffhausen itself:
Schaffhausen is home to many Swiss heritage sites. It is an old city, dating to around the 11th century CE. The river that you can see on the postcard is the Rhine River.
Europe’s largest waterfalls are nearby on the Rhine River. The Rhine Falls are 150 m (450 ft) wide and 23 m (75 ft) high:
They are a popular tourist attraction. There have been many discussions of harnessing the power of the falls to make hydroelectric power, but for now they remain undisturbed.
These cards came with two new-to-me stamps:
These stamps show some plants: Pisum sativum, the pea, and Allium cepa, onions. Beautiful stamps of common foods!
Schaffhausen had the bad luck of being mistaken for Germany during a bombing raid by the US Army Air Force on April 1, 1944. The town is in the very northern part of Switzerland and this part of Switzerland juts into Germany. More than 100 Swiss were wounded or died. The US apologized ammost immediately, and offered to pay reparations. $1 million was paid within a week and another $3 million was paid a few months later.