Thursday, June 10, 2010

Šiauliai, Lithuania

The last card for today comes from Šiauliai in Lithuania. Yes, something that is not Vilnius or Kaunas or so :)


The card shows a view of the city and also the Sundial Square, where you can see the sculpture Shooter, which is a symbol of the city. This golden archer has been the city's landmark since 1986. He is also a pointer to the largest sundial in Lithuania. As the dial, the entire space in the metal figures are embedded. It is thought that out of Lithuania Šiauliai šaulys (Sagittarius) or Saul (Sun) are derived.

In order to clarify the word 'sundial'.....A sundial is a device that measures time by the position of the Sun. In common designs such as the horizontal sundial, the sun casts a shadow from its style onto a flat surface marked with lines indicating the hours of the day. As the sun moves across the sky, the shadow-edge progressively aligns with different hour-lines on the plate. Such designs rely on the style being aligned with the axis of the Earth's rotation. Hence, if such a sundial is to tell the correct time, the style must point towards true north (not the north or south magnetic pole) and the style's angle with horizontal must equal the sundial's geographical latitude.

Whats also really special about this card is that i received it from another Depeche Mode fan :D



The stamp is from the 2008 EUROPA series, from a set of 2, representing the Great Duchy of Lithuania. The subject in 2008 was Letters, and Lithuania in particular represented Letters of Gediminas for European Cities 1323

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