Alavus is in Finland

There is a small village in Finland which is

a very peaceful place to live.

They have only about 9500 inhabitants and it

has a beautiful lake nearby. In fact, there are

about 60 of them in the countryside around

Alavus.

I received this information on a beautiful

viewcard from Sari, who is one of those 9500

people in Alavus.

On the top row, you see the Kuula intersection of

the town; and then the Church of Alavus.

In the lower left is the Bell tower, a view of Lake Alvaus,

and then the chapel and a statue from the

Chapel of Memories and the Cemetery of War Heroes.

Thank you, Sari, for a great card.

This is a very pretty stamp that accompanied

my card from Sari. I'm not sure what the medallion

respresents, but because of the crown and

the two post horns at the bottom. I am guessing it

has to do with the Royal Postal Service.

Update: After I posted this entry into my blog, I received

an e-mail from Sari. She had seen it on my blog and told

me a little more about the card. Sari made the card herself.

She says she runs around with her camera taking

photos and then spend hours editing them with her computer.

Then she has them printed with a company called Ifolor.

I think this is amazing! Sari is a wonderful photographer

as well as a design artist. The colors as shown on my blog

seem distorted, but they are not like that on the postcard.

It probably has something to do with the scanner (or

the blogger!)

She also said the Huhtam statue has nothing to do with

the Chapel of Memories. The chapel is in the Cemetery of

War Heroes, but the Huhtam statue stands in a park

by the shore of Lake Alavus. The man was a great industrialist.

And, about the stamp, she said the horns are, indeed, post horns,

and the medallion is actually a hat cockade from the

postman's official uniform.

Thank you so much, Sari, for this update.