Romania

Do you know that Romania is my hard-to-get country? I dont have the chance to receive cards from there often, but this time i was very lucky and got to receive an official! It brightened up my day I think :)

RO-15877

The card is said to depict a phenomenon known as "Muddy volcanoes", one of the best known geological reserves in the country, located in the Berca commune in the Buzău County.
As the gasses erupt from 3000 meters-deep towards the surface, through the underground layers of clay and water, they push up underground salty water and mud, so that they overflow through the mouths of the volcanoes, while the gas emerges as bubbles. The mud dries off at the surface, creating a relatively solid conical structure, resembling a real volcano. The mud expelled by them is cold, as it comes from inside the Earth's continental crust layers, and not from the mantle.
The reservation is unique in Romania. Elsewhere in Europe, similar phenomena can be observed in Italy (northern Apennines and Sicily), Ukraine (in the Kerch Peninsula), as well as Azerbaijan.
The mud volcanoes create a strange lunar landscape, due to the absence of vegetation around the cones. Vegetation is scarce because the soil is very salty, an environmental condition in which few plants can survive. However, this kind of environment is good for some rare species of plants.

There are three stamps on the card, where the middle one was issued in 2007 in a set of 4, representing:Romanian Pottery - Peasant Dishes III, and here is shown Luncavita-Tulcea. The other two stamps were issued in 2005 in a set of 7, again representing Romanian Pottery, where the left stamp shows a wedding pitcher from Curtea de Arges, Arges while the right one comes from the region Leheceni, Bihor.