Oranje without oranges

One of my paternal great great uncles is said never to have eaten an orange "because they come from Spain" a country against which the Netherlands fought a war back in the fifteenth century or thereabouts. I, on the other hand, in spite of their victory over Holland in the final of the 2010 Soccer World Cup, bear the Spanish no such animosity. But it was with a certain amount of poignancy that I received my first letter from the home country after that loss.

Kees Prooij sent me a second selection of Dutch stamps - 150 this time. I've reciprocated with another batch of NZ stamps.

A few of the enclosed stamps featured 'voetball', so I arranged the entire selection according to colour on a field of organge (an old Vita Rich tee-shirt). They look like a winning team, don't they?

World Cup soccer (sort of)

Bev is Australian. She lives on a bit of land outside of the city. It's quieter there, which suits her. And having a hobby helps also. Bev has been collecting stamps for most of her life. She found my contact details on All Stamps Paradise, which she is using for the first time.

To get the ball rolling, she sent me a couple of dozen of stamps from a quartet of countries. I'm going to run with that theme and analyze the stamps from a footballer's point of view. We'll imagine that Norway, Germany, Finland and the Netherlands have reached the semi-finals (at the time of writing, Germany and the Netherlands actually have). As a fair and impartial observer I'm going to referee/judge those stamps to decide which team wins the 2010 World Cup.Norway wins the kick-off, but there's a long way to until the final whistle. They're a team with a lot of experience (receding hairlines and baldness) and a fine pedigree with their numeral stamps of which there are four. Their control of the ball is moderate (5 or so stamps have a good circular postmark). They get a yellow card for a repeat-stamp infringement. But they are awarded 3 free kicks for some very fine stamps: the 3.50 and 4.60 in the second bottom row, and the middle stamp in the bottom row of a kayaker.

The Netherlands, as might be expected from a team that invented 'total football' have an unorthodox formation. They are led by Johan Kruijf, the Van Gogh of soccer. Their play is more playful - they seem to be in a merry-making mode (stamps featuring clowns and people in fancy dress). They have fantastic ball control as about 10 of the stamps sport a circular postmark. But no one player really stands out, and the numeral and Queen stamps have a dull day on the field.

Much is expected from the Germans. They have a solid team (stamps that feature buildings). However, they are a little unsure of themselves (it is hard to read their country's name in the typically small font used. Again, like the Norwegians, they have a few older players. The commemorative stamps indicate that they may be feeling overwhelmed by a sense of history. They played well against the US of A and Japan, but today is another day.

An upset! The Finnish team starts their game facing the wrong way and, as a result, score an early own goal. But they regroup and recover quickly. Four stamps have a sports theme, and several stamps have excellent graphics. They go on to win deservedly, the first time ever that Finland wins the World Cup.

Hup, Holland, hup!

Kees, a Dutchman, asked to exchange some stamps with me. I believe he's about the third so far. I always enjoy using a bit of Dutch, as it's my mother tongue. I spoke nothing else before the age of 5. I used my Dutch middle name to prove that point - otherwise you can't tell - and so Kees's envelope is the first to bear the name of my maternal grandfather, for whom I am named.
I was a little apprehensive . . . in my opinion Dutch stamps include some of the most boring definitives in the world!

I was pleasantly surprised to see this artistic and colorful array of postal art from my parents' homeland. Even though, in the football sweepstake, I got given Brazil as my team, I hope that Holland wins the world cup in 2010 (as I thought they would in '74 and '78).  Yes Kees, they are "naar mijn zin".

Bedankt. 

A Doppelganger from Downunder?

Could Pieter Welten be my doppelganger? The reason I ask the question is that there certainly seems to be some synchronicity going on concerning us. Pieter is from the Netherlands, where my parents come from. They emigrated to New Zealand in the early fifties - met each other here in fact. I was born a Kiwi, but spent 18 months in Holland when I was young, and was introduced to stamp collecting by my cousins. The European stamps of the time are etched in my mind. 'Proper' stamps.

 

You would expect that a Dutchman would exchange stamps from the Low countries for stamps from Downunder. However, Pieter send me a packet with recent Australian stamps - all of which I did not have or have even seen. Pieter has a good Antipodean collection because as a young child he spent 2 years in NZ, and an uncle lived in Australia for many years.

Pieter and I have had a record number of email exchanges. He sends me scans of his swaps, and I mark out those which I would like to have. I shall do the same, as soon as I get my act together: organize my duplicates onto stock pages and figure out how to use a scanner. Still, if I can write a blog the scanning shouldn't be beyond me.

Dutch eel

Bertus Beelen comes from Eelde, a place in the Netherlands I'd never heard of, even though my parents are Dutch, and I have visited the country twice, once to cycle around it. Bertus, the 14th equal person to send me used postage stamps, informed me that Eelde was a little town a few kilometres south of Groningen, but that it had its own airport.

Through a mixture of Dutch and English (we could have used just English, as Bertus is fluent in it, but I wanted to try out the language I learned as a kid) we agreed to exchange 50 commemoratives from our respective countries. I wondered what they would look like . . .

Modern European postage stamps - also Australia, USA, Brazil - to seem to be converging to a common form. They have informal subjects (cartoons!?), using a lot of white as background and around the  edges. It's hard to tell at a glance which countries they might be from.

I prefer the older kind. They had/have more personality, dignity etc. And because they didn't come out so often it was possible to collect all of them.

I'm going to have to think about specializing . . .