Polish postmark

Many MFN members know that I collect several themes in addition to my main theme "Motorcycles".

One of them is a "Globe" collection, which means that I collect globes on philately. Recently I bought a postcard through Delcampe with an illustration of a bunch of children dancing around the globe. The illustration shows the logo of the 2001 Salesian World Games, organized by a church movement in the spirit of Francis de Sales.

Nothing special and in fact, because the card is not addressed, it wouldn't be suitable to show in an exhibition. But when I received it, I took a closer look at the postmark on the card, and read the word "MOTOCYKLOWY" among other things. That called for further investigation!

The heart of the postmark shows a hot air balloon and the date 2001-07-21. In the ring around it I read "VI TORUŃSKI ZLOT MOTOCYKLOWY BMW VETERAN CLUB" (coincidence that the postmark looks like the BMW logo?) with the post office designation Toruń 1. Zlot here means as much as Meeting. Toruń, in Poland, is the venue.

So I started looking for that BMW Veterans club. The club was founded in 1977 by enthusiastic owners of elderly (army) motorcycles of the BMW brand. At that time, the motorcycle base consisted mainly of BMW single-cylinders and military sidecars with boxer engines. From the photos on their Facebook page I conclude that nowadays all brands of motorcycles are included in the club. Logical, because vehicles that were still new 45 years ago are now also veterans. This year, the club's 45th anniversary was celebrated with another meeting/party.

Back to 2001. Also in that year a meeting was organized by the club, in the weekend of 20 to 22 July in Toruń. For this celebration a permit to make a flight with a hot air balloon was requested. The permit was granted and the postal service was asked to use a special postmark in the place of landing. The postmark shown was already applied upon departure. Because such a balloon is difficult to steer, three surrounding places were designated as arrival stamping places, namely Włocławek 1, Grudziądz 1 and Bydgoszcz 1.

The balloon, which took off from Toruń at 5:45 PM, ended its flight in Podzamcze at 7:02 PM, covering a distance of 22 km.
656 standard letters and 117 registered letters were transported. The mail was brought from the landing site to Włocławek, where the cargo was received at 20:00 and stamped with the arrival postmark. Another additive postmark of the balloon and its crew was applied in green: SP - BIR "ALTOM" THUNDER COLT 69A balloon and the balloonists Jerzy Wiśniewski, Paweł Noskowicz and Leszek Zieliński.

Unfortunately, my postcard has not joined the flight, and I actually have to divide the card into two collections. So I think I have to tear it in 2 pieces.

Hans de Kloet

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