Last year, the contestants had to create stamps that can be connected to astronomy, while the topic for 2008 was letter-writing; both year Hungarian nominations gained first prize, similarly to this year.

The stories of Vackor, the little bruin were written by István Kormos and have been well-known for everyone in Hungary.

The adventures of the lovely little bear have been popular among the Hungarian children and their parents, for decades.

The success of Vackor could be also associated with Károly Reich, graphic artist, who completed István Kormos’s nice story with fabulous illustrations. Reich’s original illustrations were re-created into the form of stamps by György Kara, renowned graphic artist and designer of stamps.

According to Botond Szebeny, dr, chief secretary of PostEurop, stamps are valuable elements of the European heritage and as such, countries should take more efforts to preserve them appropriately.

The tender of PostEurop was created to serve this project, to protect one of the most important essentials of European traditions. He revealed that as UN declared 2011 to be the international year of forests, the subject for next year will be forests.

Translated from nlcafe.hu by Andrea Siegel