STAFF AT a Fife old people’s home have been left completely baffled after receiving a postcard from Germany—56 years late.

Mystery surrounds the delivery of the postcard in the morning mail to Gibson House in St Andrews town centre.

Complete with a franked 10 pfennig stamp and written in German, it was addressed to Fraulein Hannelore Herfort at Gibson Hospital—as it was known more than half a century ago—and was dated August 21, 1950.

Manager of Gibson House, Valerie Henning, was stunned when she discovered it in the pile of mail and noticed the date on the postcard, which depicts a black and white photograph of a German river scene.

Sent to Scotland from Rudesheim/Rhein, translated it reads, ‘Dear Hannelore, dear Marlene, Best wishes to both of you from my cycling tour along the Rhine. At the moment we are in Rudesheim, opposite Bingen. Marvellous sunny weather, rain only from Hamborn to Cologne. Most of the time we eat our fill of free windfalls. We are staying in Rudesheim for another day. Then it’s back home again. We should be home next Monday. Love to both of you. Yours Rosemarie.’

Mrs Henning said yesterday, “I just couldn’t believe it when I examined it. The postcard bears no British post office markings. It’s all a bit of a mystery.

“It could be that it was lost or hidden in a German sorting office before being found recently and then popped in the post.”

Staff at Gibson House have already made some initial investigations in the residential home’s archives and records in the hope that they could come up with some information on Hannelore Herfort.