Today I learned that you can order postage stamps online in Germany. Ordering postage stamps online is one of my favorite things to do, and I did this often when I was back home in the States, so you can imagine my delight.

It’s incredibly expensive to mail anything to the US from Germany. A postcard costs €1 and a letter, €1,70! So I bought these cute €1 stamps that celebrate the 150th birthday of Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf with an illustration by the German artist Wilhelm Schulz. The image depicts a scene from one of Lagerlöf’s best known works, a children’s book called The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, published in 1906. Three years later she became the first female writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.