Where is Zargrad?

Just like any other collectors of Lithuanian and German stamps, at first, I was assuming that the German name of the Lithuanian city Zarasai during WWII was "Zargrad". It is most probably due to the German stamp catalog Michel which is likely to be the only universal stamp catalog mentioning about the 1941 Zarasai overprinted stamp.

Section of Michel 2009 listing Zarasai (Zargrad) stamps

The strange thing is that I can't find any other historical references mentioning that Zarasai was called Zargrad. This town had many names in the course of history. The oldest official name was probably Jeziorosy, the Polish name, since it was the official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at that time the town was founded. It clearly comes from the word "jezioro" which means "lake" in Polish. So is it Polish? Not so fast... Although the intelligentsia of the country was Polish speaking at that time, many people spoke Lithuanian in forgotten villages across the nation (including part of present Belarus, which you can see from numerous Belarusian villages still bearing names of Lithuanian origin) which is the only factor why the Lithuanian language has been preserved up to the present day. Zarasai was called "Ežerėnai" in Lithuanian which derives from "ežeras" meaning also "lake" like the Polish name. It is not known which one came first to use since there are no Lithuanian written sources mentioning about Zarasai back in those years but linguists suspects that it may have come from a Selonian origin, another now extinct Baltic tribe (Not Slavic!).

  The second change of name came towards the end of the Imperial Russian rule, this time: Новоалександровск / Novoaleksandrovsk. It has been named after the honor of Alexander II of Russia, who later became the Tsar/Emperor of Russia, even though Zarasai was far from being an "Imperial city".

  After WWI, Lithuania regained independence. Logically, the town's name goes back to the Lithuanian name: Ežerėnai, but it looks like they didn't really like the fact that it may have come from a Selonian origin (which is believed to be part of the Latvian ancestry), the town was renamed Zarasai in 1929.

  During WWII, the Germans occupied Lithuania and incorporated within Ostland, and Zarasai was renamed Ossersee (again we see the term "lake" as "see" means lake in German) but the use of Lithuanian name Zarasai was not prohibited. As the war ended, the Soviet authority reinstated the name Зарасай/Zarasai.

So that was the brief history of the name of the town but as you can see, there is no "Zargrad". If indeed Michel had made a mistake, then with which location did they mixed up? My theory surprisingly came up when I was researching about Istanbul, Turkey. Most of the people know that Istanbul was called Constantinople when it was the Imperial capital of the Byzantine Empire. I just happened to try to get informations on Google in Czech language which is called "Cařihrad". Czech is a Slavic language just like Polish or Russian, and I could easily see the similarities between them. "Car" (pronounced "tsar") corresponds to Russian "Tsar", the emperor, and "hrad" is "grad" in Russian like in Lenin-grad or Kalinin-grad, meaning all together the "Imperial city", Tsar-grad. Thinking it should be similar in Polish, I looked at an old Imperial Russian map written in Polish, the area around Novoaleksandrovsk which was the name of Zarasai at that time. And... I've found "Carogród", not far from Zarasai.

The location of Carogród is in Kurland/Courland, which means it was at that time, a German speaking area within the Russian empire. Guess how would you spell the Russian name "Tsargrad" in German? Zargrad!
I went to the english Wikipedia to confirm my discovery but... all it gives me was "Principality of Jersika , an early medieval principality in eastern modern Latvia.". Not only it doesn't give you any reference on why it was called Zargrad in German, the German version doesn't even mention a word of Zargrad and so does the Latvian version. The capital city of the principality called also Jersika is clickable in the english Wikipedia but it gives you the same cr*p (sorry). This is another lesson why you can't trust Wikipedia completely.
Looking at the map carefully, I've found that Carogród is along the railway line Daugavpils (shown as "Dynaburg" on the above map) - Riga to the north west. Now looking at the list of the Imperial Russian railway stations from Daugavpils, and guess what! The third station is "Zargrad"!! Now back to the present map of Latvia hoping that they didn't add any new station... and... Jersika? It looks like a super tiny village but there is a station called Jersika, just like that principality. Now going back to Wikipedia and to look for the entry: Jersika station. Nothing about Zargrad but... clicking the Latvian version, Bingo! "Jersika (stacija), Zargrad in German". Finally...

So my conclusion is:
- The author of Michel probably couldn't find the super tiny village of Jersika.
- Detailed map of the Soviet Union was not much available in the west, including West Germany where Michel was published.
- The closest name to Zargrad nearby was Zarasai.
- Both Zargrad and Novoaleksandrovsk (Zarasai) derives loosely from "Imperial city".
- Both locations have similar distance from Daugavpils.

I think Zargrad must be Jersika, Latvia.  What do you think?

Tracking mails coming from Lithuania

I had few people asking about registered letters coming from Lithuania. Many people think international registered mails from Lithuania are untrackable unlike EMS. That is not entirely true. They are some countries where you can actually track registered mails on Lithuanian Post's official website. However, not every country has an agreement of mutual online information exchange (except EMS) which makes some country impossible to track once it goes out of Lithuania.

This is a tracking result of a registered letter sent from the post office - postal code 78014 (Šiauliai) on 15/10/2012 to Tokyo, Japan. You can see that on the 17/10, it is leaving from the international forwarding post office in Vilnius and then... just disappear. According to the Lithuanian Post office website mail tracking system, this mail has never been delivered. Lithuanian Post does not have agreement of sharing information with Japanese post so no matter how long you will wait, it will never appear. I guess this is what happened to lot of people and started to wonder if it got lost or something. Well, have you ever notice that until 4, 5 years ago, registration labels had the post office name and number on it? Now it has been all replaced by barcodes. Those barcodes are actually revolutional, because it allowed to digitally record the registration number of the country of origin. What does it mean? It means that you can just go to the website of the Post of the destination country and enter the Lithuanian registered number you have enter in Lithuanian Post website!

Going to the Japanese Post website... and Voilà! Now you have the missing part after 17/10, I happily got the mail on 20/10, exactly 5 days after it has been posted in Šiauliai. You will be surprised in how many countries this would work. They are some countries like Germany where they hand out part of the mails to some private delivering companies. I have discovered that in such case, you can't track the mails unfortunately.

The quality of the Lietuvos paštas

If I'm counting right, today I've got the 300th mail posted from Lithuania. The 300th mail was a stampless prepaid regular priority letter from Druskininkai posted on 12 November 2012 to Tokyo, Japan. It is just 3 days ago. From my experience, the Lietuvos paštas/Lithuanian Post is fast, reliable and efficient. I have received it mainly in Czech Republic and Japan over the last 10 years but so far the number of missing mail is ZERO. The speed of delivery is also impressive, all of the last 10 priority mails I have received in Tokyo, took just 3 working days according to the postmarks. Registered mails are a bit slower but also never failed to reach the destination within 6 working days. Most of my correspondences are between European countries and I had some bad experiences with Italy and Great Britain, not just once. The US can be terribly slow depending on where you are corresponding. Many people believe that western countries offer better postal services but as far as I know, Lithuanian postal services are better than most of the western countries. From my opinion, the European countries that offer very fast and reliable postal service are: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Czech Republic, Germany, Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark, Slovenia, Croatia and (surprisingly) Spain. I imagine Noway or Iceland could be as good as those countries but I had never a chance to get anything from there. Switzerland? Not as fast as it should be..