Category: Mail

This lovely painting of Minsk City Hall is from Catherine, who loves metal music and went to a folk festival yesterday. 

Aside from the fact that this is a Christian Church, I can’t tell much about this postcard and the descriptors on the back are all in Chinese. 

Look at these stamps!  (Placed in the lower left-hand corner.  The address was on the left side too.)

My observation of the many postcards I’ve received from countries with character-type (as opposed to letter-type) languages is that the handwriting is beautiful, not at all like the scrawl that comes out the the US and Europe.  I wonder if languages with characters require a greater attention to detail?

One postcrosser even wrote in her profile a plea to please write neatly.  

Someone has been having fun cleaning out their stash in preparation for a move and someone else has been enjoying said someone’s largess.

Regular commenter Sara tells me that she and semi-regular commenter Shawn enjoyed how this couple demonstrates the changing nature of fashion and shape.

Indeed, S&S, indeed.

This incredibly cute postcard comes from Dina who is from the Ukraine, but studying at the University in Poland.  She reports that she likes music, especially “rock and rock’n’roll”  I’m not sure what the difference is.  Maybe rock music is from today and rock’n’roll is from the past?

Here’s 1 of 3!  It just took its time getting here.  Apparently there was a fourth postcard in the set, but regular commenter Sara kept it because the quote was “I cannot live without books.”  

I don’t blame her.  Me neither.

This one said 3/3 on the back.

This one said 2/3 on the back.

Where was 1/3?  Not in my mailbox today.  

Anyway, a certain regular commenter who currently lives in Virginia sent this to me from Minnesota, where she will soon move.  I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the two states, as well as the Thomas Jefferson quotes.

I returned from our Crater Lake Trip to find this postcard from Stephan in Germany.  He works as an art historian and is a specialist in religious architecture.  This is a wonderful example of a Bavarian Baroque church.  Next week, Stephen was going to the Spanish Pyrenees.  

 This is from Sandra in the Netherlands.  She tells me that tomorrow (6/13) is her birthday, that she lives with 4 (!) men, three sons and a husband, and also that she is a part-time teacher.  The quote she included was “Be yourself, no matter what they say” which is from Sting’s song “Englishman in New York” which happens to be one of the first 45RPM records I purchased.

That would be Richmond, Virginia, for those of you unsure.  

This is from regular commenter Sara and she reports that Richmond has an amazing art museum and it’s FREE!

Pretty cool, as is this sculpture by Barry Flanagan.

This is from Shawn, occasional commenter, regular reader and also husband of a certain regular commenter.  He went to Budapest for work, lucky dog.  And lucky me, because I got a postcard.  Perhaps I can entice him to comment by asking him if it was difficult to locate postcards.  When I was there we had to go to three different stores before I found some.  But a teenager was leading me around and I’m not sure if he knew what postcards were for.

This is from Kristine in Moscow who has naturally red hair and loves the night sky.   Although she tells me right now there is only four hours from sunset to sunrise, so there isn’t a lot of night sky viewing.  

Great stamps!

There was also a quote printed on the back of the card which she Google translated for me as:

“And what we worry, crying and arguing about loved grieve before that could not stand.  Big eyed stars over the sea silk smooth surface rest by the night.”

I really like the art on this card.

Lyudmila sends me her greetings from Belarus which, according to her is, “an oasis in the heart of Europe.  Not by chance is it called ‘blue-eyed.'”

I just looked on a map to see where Belarus is [postcrossing: improving my shoddy geographical sense one postcard at a time] and I have to quibble with that “heart of Europe” statement.  Of course, that’s because I came of age where Europe ended at the border of the USSR which is, of course, no more.  So in that old mental map, Belarus is very much outside the heart of Europe. Then I looked up a map of Europe and got a EU one.  Even in that map, Belarus is on the very edge and not in Europe (because it’s not an EU member state).  So perhaps that saying is asperational.  I know those former USSR republics mostly didn’t want to be members of said Soviet Empire.

Anyway, Lyudmila is 41 and has a husband and two sons–teenagers.  She says, “I am happy with my family.”