Bulgaria

Believe it or not, I still havent visited the Bulgarian coastline, but that's why Chris has, and sent me this postcard along :))

The top picture shows a glimpse of the town of Pomorie, a seaside resort in southeastern Bulgaria on the Black Sea Coast.
The bottom left shows the Eurasian hoopoe bird, while for example the third one, one of the beautiful Bulgarian srain stamps, which Im proud to say, I stocked myself up with during my last trip there just recently. About the efficiency of the Bulgarian mail, in another post :)

Two stamps from the set of four mushrooms issued in 2014.

Scenic Railway, St. Kitts

Well since the plans for the rest of the day have been cancelled, it wouldn't be a bad idea to use that time for an update here, right?? And who knows, maybe it would end up as a good thing, these cancelled plans, since it looks like a storm is approaching... once again - been having those like on daily basis now, as if someone has pushed a button and switched climates on this planet...

 As promised last time, this update will be dedicated to one of my fairies, and this time it is my dear Agi... and this post also coincides with this time of the year, cos it is the time of the InMusic Festival, but unfortunately this year I couldn't go... so no missiles fired to some mailboxes around the world either =/

And will open this post with a great train card from St. Kitts.
The Scenic Railway in St. Kitts. takes the passengers on a 3-hour tour that makes a 30-mile circle around the beautiful  island , with 18 miles by narrow gauge train and 12 miles on sightseeing buses. Built between 1912 and 1926 to transport sugar cane from the island’s sugar plantations to the sugar factory in the capital city of Basseterre, today the “Last Railway in the West Indies” provides visitors an unsurpassed opportunity to experience the scenery and culture of this unspoiled country.

there are two fruit stamps on the card, tangerines and a sugar apple - should be from a set of fruit stamps issued in 2007 but I am not 100% sure about it....

this card arrived without the address number btw but I guess I have become well known throughout the years :)))

Vienna, Austria

Seems that winter days are back =/ Not that we had had any actual winter, but after some days of beautiful sunshine and nice temperatures, it is all gray and dark and rainy and cold again...blah :((
So being that I don't have that many obligations today and the weather is kinda begging you to stay indoors (not difficult to convince me at all), here comes another update, and today it is all dedicated to Postcrossing meeting cards :)
I have received a lot of these over the years, I have already posted some before, some are still left to see the light of the blog, but for today I have randomly chosen the following, most of which arrived during last year.

Will open this with one of the many cards I have received from Anita and from the meetings that have been taking place in Austria. And most of the time they have some specially designed cards for the event, like the one you can see here, where the Postcrossing meeting was merged with a book fair in Vienna - now how perfect is that? Books and postcards! And I'm pretty sure there were cakes somewhere in the story as well :)

I have never really asked who is the designer behind these cards, but now that I think about it, it might be Anita itself actually :) And I am really happy that I had the chance to meet her recently during my one day trip to Graz where from what I thought would be a cup of coffee, turned out into a lovely day well-spent! She really made sure we feel welcome and cosy in Graz!

On the back of course you can see the signatures, where I recognize like just half of the usernames. However, I am delighted with the stamp! Falco! Can't believe it it's been 20 years since he had died (speaking of deaths, today I learned that Stalone has moved into a different world as well...actually seems like a lot of famous people have already said goodbye to this world already this year and one that truly saddened me was when I heard last week that Jóhann Jóhannsson died too =/)

The Falco stamp was issued last year, commemorating 60 years since his birth. And besides the great stamp, the cancellation is also very interesting, though I am not exactly sure if it is supposed to represent something special or no - I see the name of Lustenau given, along with its postcode.

Thanks a lot lot to Anita for this one and all the other lovely cards she has surprised my mailbox with.  ❤

Kinsey's Locomotives, USA

Next is a meeting card from over the pond! And I just realized that the majority of meeting cards I receive are from Europe, and rarely something coming from a different continent. I guess I just don't know the right people :D

But I surely know the right person for this one :P It is from the meeting in Seattle that took place last July the 30th and the guilty one why I have this card is of course Bryon :) And he made sure to enrich my train cards' collection as well :)
The card shows the Heisler locomotive (rebuilt and regauged by Heisler Locomotive Works) in Redmond, Washington in 1922.

Now I do not really recognize the majority of the usernames, but I do see that people had fun with leaving coffee marks on this one... I wonder why :D They were even kind enough to explicitly tell me about the origin of the stain, so you can see a cappuccino, an americano, a chai and something jam-filled - I guess it is some kind of a cake we are talking about :)

As for the stamps - the red pear definitive was issued in 2017, as well as the sharks ones, which come from a set of 5 (showing the Great White Shark and the Mako Shark), and also we have a stamp commemorating the bicentennial of the American Revolution, issued in 1971.

Well thank you Bryon very much   ❤

Porto, Portugal

Next is a card that dear Marta sent me from a small meeting held in Porto on November 11th, last year.

If there is something typical about Portugal, it is all these beautifully decorated tiles and these can actually be seen at the São Bento Railway Station! That is really thoughtful Marta! Thank you so much!

There are approximately 20,000 azulejo tiles, dating from 1905–1916, and were composed by Jorge Colaço, an important painter of azulejo of the time. You can see different scenes, events, and personalities depicted on these walls, like the Battle of Arcos de Valdevez and Egas Moniz before Alfonso VII of Castile, D. João I in Oporto, with his fiancé and the Conquest of Ceuta,  the Battle of Valdevez, a meeting between the knight Egas Moniz and Alfonso VII of León in Toledo etc etc etc.

there is even a train sticker on the back of the card :D The stamp is from a set of 4 issued in 2017, representing Trees of the Mediterranean. This one shows a strawberry tree or Arbutus unedo.

Muito obrigada Marta!  ❤ 

Bangladesh

Good day to you all.. after like a month after the previous post. But at least it is not a year. And in my defence, the last few weeks have been hectic, in several life spheres but now I am having some me-time, and lets put up a few posts here. This weather outside sucks anyway...

I've been doing some thinking and I have decided to do some posts dedicated to some of my postcard fairies. You know how I just cannot choose cards totally at random but always have to overcomplicate stuff and find some meaningful pattern and blah blah blah...
So there we go, and my postcard-fairy of the day is Sissel, a name you have encountered here on a lot of occasions, esp. with those breathtaking Norwegian cards ;-)
And today's first card from Sissel is as part of a fantastic trip she took last year (all her trips are fantastic though), and among all the other places, she got to visit Bangladesh too.
Not my first one from Bangladesh, the debut was here, few years ago. But also not my last since another Bangladesh card is on my way from what I know, I just hope it doesn't get lost in the dark halls of the postal service somewhere.
Regarding this one, I am not exactly sure what it represents; looks like some kind of a celebration for a National Day or something. I could say a protest as well, but the few faces I can spot look kinda cheerful and not in a protesting mood, so I don't know. Still it is a super cool card!

the stamp on the right was issued in 2012, commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Bangladesh Police Academy, while the other one is from 1989, representing Bangladesh Landmarks, showing the Curzon Hall, a British Raj-era building and home of the Faculty of Science at the University of Dhaka. The building was originally intended to be a town hall and is named after Lord Curzon.

Chiang Mai Thailand

Next is again an Asian card, this time from Thailand.

I think that this is a kind of a view every postcard collector loves coming across when travelling. Not only because of the large choice of postcards, but just look at the way they have been arranged, so appealing to the eye!
This is a scene in the Wualai Walking Street in Chiang Mai. You know, I never heard of Chiang Mai until I met these two lovely ladies during my trip in Vientiane. French girls who actually lived in Chian Mai and while talking to them I realized what a lovely place this is, though maybe it has become way too touristy for my taste, but still.
Unfortunately, from what I could see, they had to leave Thailand for good few months ago, but I hope life is still good for them back in France. Big hug to Sandrine and Claire while we are at it.

again, a bunch of super-fantastic stamps! The mailboxes were issued in 2016 in a set of 10 for the National Children's Day and they feature AESAN mailboxes (the red one is from Thailand while the yellow one from Vietnam). The owls are from a set of 4 issued in 2013 (on the top is the collared owlet or Glaucidium brodiei, while underneath is the collared scops owl or the Otus lettia.)

Edinburgh, Scotland

And one more Sissel card for today, this time from Scotalnd's capital.

As neatly explained on the back of the card "Evening light on the Old Town and Edinburgh Castle, views from Calton Hill".
I have written about the Castle before, so won't be repeating myself here. Though I think that so far I have it from all the possible angles and all views are just stunning!

a cute Christmas stamp issued in 2016 in a set of 8.

Soo, that would be all for today, It is about time I get down to some ACTUAL work.

Millions of hugs to Sissel for these cards and the bunch of others still not featured.

And see you soon with maybe another fairy-related post. Let's see who the random generator chooses next time ;-)

stay well!

Dhow Sailing, Zanzibar

Well hello there, for the second time this year! Sounds strange?! Yeah, to me too! I don't know if saying 'we better get used to it' is a bit far-fetched at this moment though :P But for as long as it lasts... hope you enjoy it!

I don't participate as often as I used to in the forum's swaps/tags/round robins, but sometimes I do end up catching a good spot, and that is how I ended up getting my first ever written and stamped card from Zanzibar! (I don't get new countries that often any longer, but when I do, it sure is a gem! ;-)

The card shows a dhow sailing (in the Indian Ocean, I guess) - word of the day: dhow - generic name of a number of traditional sailing vessels with one or more masts with lateen sails used in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean region. Historians are divided as to whether the dhow was invented by Arabs or Indians. (It is not like historians could ever agree on anything....)
They are primarily used to carry heavy items, like fruit, fresh water or merchandise.

Now, if to anyone this stamp saying Tanzania comes as a disappointment, it shouldn't, since Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous region of Tanzania and even though it has its own Government, postage stamps are a different issue. If you do have a read about Zanzibar's history of postage stamps though, it does get a bit confusing, being that it used Indian stamps in the 19th century and then later it fell into the hands of the British Empire. So the bottom line, in this year and this century, I couldn't have possibly received a Zanzibar card with a Zanzibar stamp, but the cool thing is that even on the Tanzanian stamps, they do show some Zanzibar-related things, so that counts :D

This stamp is from a set of 4 Tourism stamps issued in 2010, showing Zanzibar attractions - here you can see the Red Colobus Monkey.

Thanks a million to Olia for this card! It is actually really cool to be able to visit a country like Zanzibar :)

Montana, USA

Next is a card from one of the people from my list of 'responsible for keeping my mailbox entertained, whether I am on a hiatus or not'.

At first glance, one may not be fully aware about what this 'enough said' entitles - one could think Montana struggles with some electricity issues, but at second glance, that would mean half of the US does as well - though now with all the Trump's policies, who knows...

But what the author of this card actually wanted to point out was the population density in Montana - at 630 miles wide and 255 miles high, Montana is the 4th largest state but the 44th least populated one, having only seven people per square mile.... yep, enough said, you guys live in tranquility.

lot of cool stamps here. First the older ones. A unique set combining four stamps in a block that contains one overall design. (I am not sure what the exact philatelic term would be for this, it is not se-tenant). This issue commemorates the 100th Anniversary of National Parks and it shows the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, an area that contains some of the earliest sites of English colonial settlement. Issued in 1972.

The forever stamps are from 2017. The se-tennat hockey ones were issued by USPS and is a joint issue with Canada, celebrating the history of ice-hockey. The stamp on the right portrays a modern hockey player, skating on a pond in present day, wearing a modern uniform and contemporary equipment, while the left one shows a vintage player, representing the game's past, against a snowy background, wearing a vintage garb and old-fashioned equipment.

And last we have two definitive grape stamps issued in 2017, for additional postage. Hmm, too many things revolving around grapes lately, and the product thereof...

Thanks a bunch to Bryon for this one! :)))

Severn Valley Railway, England

A lovely train card sent by dear Anu.

The West Country Class No. 34027 `Taw Valley` was built in Brighton in 1945 and here it can be seen crossing the magnificent Victoria Bridge over the River Severn in the UK.

Anu always uses fantastic stamps! First we have two of the Theater stamps (built during the Shakespearean era) issued in 1995 in a set of 5 - here we have the Hope from 1613 and the Globe from 1614 (the rebuilt version, after being destroyed in a fire in 1613).
The train stamp is from a set of five British Pub Signs, issued in 1995 - this stamp shows 'The Station' by Andrew Davidson. And last of course, you have her Majesty, the Queen.

Thanks a lot lot Anu!

Johor Strait Lighthouse, Singapore

Last for today is this beautiful Singaporean lighthouse, which I realized I have twice in my collection.

The first one was sent by Valentina from the Postcrossing meeting in Singapore held in July that year. Out of ll the names, I could only recognize that Lee Hock Peng and sybones attended as well.
The other card arrived as an official last year.

There are only 6 operating lighthouses in Singapore today, and this is one of them. The Johor strait is an international strait between Singapore and mainland Malaysia. Unfortunately google didnt prove very useful regarding this one, except that the lighthouse is Located at the end of a jetty at the Raffles Marina in Tuas, just west of the Second Link Expressway bridge over the strait and that there is a white flash every 10 seconds, and that it has a 12 m round cylindrical concrete tower with lantern and gallery, painted white. The navigation light is mounted atop the lantern.

Very useful google, indeed..

The stamps from Valentina's card show two from the Vanishing Trades series - first is one from 2014, showing a cage maker, while the other one is from 2013, showing a lantern maker (such crafts and trades have been vanishing from Macedonia as well...)

The other stamp is from 2017 from a set of 6 stamps called 'Morning of Singapore'. Well mornings usually relate to rush hours and chaos - this one seems to be rather calm so I guess it relates to one during the weekends :)))

Thanks to Valentina and deezee for this card, and to everyone signing it at the PC meeting, and thanks to you for dropping by.
Till next time...

The Ease of sending Postcards in Guangzhou

As i had previously mentioned, finding postcards here has been far from an easy task...they say you can find them in post offices, but from what Ive seen so far it is usually those sold in booklets (and with a terrrible choice) or more like greeting cards...and then I recalled I saw once a shop at the Shamian Island selling cards, so the other day I decided to go there and do my first postcards' spree...which went kinda successful...why kinda? Well ok, the postcards' choice may not be vast but is acceptable (it is still better than nothing), and they are at a quite reasonable price of 2 CNY, which equals something like 30 cents. For starters I got few copies of each of these three...sorry for the not the best images, but no scanner here...

and to my delight the lady working there also asked me if I needed stamps, and I was like, whoo, this solves a big problem, sparing me the trouble of making myself understood at the post office with my non-existent conversing in Chinese...so I ask for 15 stamps, for the 15 postcards I bought, she types numbers into her calculator and gives me a final sum that leaves a perplexed expression on my face....hm, sorry, how much is the postage??? - 8 yuan she replies (1.20 dollars) - I know postage in some countries is high but thanks to the hundreds and hundreds of cards I have received from China, I immediately knew something was fishy here (otherwise I would have probably believed her and fell in her trap - thank God I actually said NO when she previously said she was gonna stick the stamps on the cards for me...very crafty from her side - and the only reason I said NO was because I do want to arrange the layout on my own cards not because I actually suspected she would try to trick me..

Anyways, after I told her 8 CNY is too much and that I would take the cards only, she said - ok 6 yuan, good price! good price! - who the hell is bargaining for a postage rate??? it is either 6 or 8 or whatever other amount it may be but this was just an additional sign she wanted to rip me off (and she was disappointed her plan didnt work out - I wonder how many tourists have fell into this trap at this particular spot)

after this I asked the Chinese community at postcrossing about the postage rate and believe it or not it is either 3 CNY for surface mail or 4.5 CNY for airmail, but of course it is neither 6 nor 8. 

I know that with mail from China in the end it may make no difference whether it is airmail or not, but I decided to go with the airmail and see how it goes

so armoured with a dictionary, pieces of paper on which I have written the amount of stamps I need (simply as 15 x 4.5 CNY), i go to a small post office that is right in my street (how convenient) and ask for stamps (thankfully they did speak English in the amount necessary to get the stamps). So I buy 15 stamps, 4.5 CNY each, the lady at the counter types in the numbers on her calculator and shows me the final sum of 135 CNY - I already had a 100 CNY bill in my hands and again give the calculator a confused look (I really start wondering what the calculators have against me). The lady at the counter reluctantly takes my bill and says, but this is too little money...I know she may not be versed enough with the numbers in English, but I thought that maybe some common sense should have told her that 15 stamps of that rate could not possibly cost 135 CNY! So starting to get a bit pissed, since I dont know anymore if someone is trying to rip me off or if it was an unintentional mistake, I open the calculator on my phone and am about to show her the math, when she does her math again on her own calculator, and oh look. this time it showed 67.5...and she cant believe her eyes, she is all surprised..so she does the calculation again - 67.5....and then again, just to make sure - yeah 67.5...so I finally manage to buy stamps at the ACTUAL price  and go back home 

for my 'experimental' postcards' sending from China, I decided to go with the official cards, mainly cos I haven't sent any since I left Macedonia, so I do want to work on it a bit and get it back to shape...so i get the addresses (nothing exciting there) and write my first 5 cards out of the 15 addresses, and just in case add EUROPE after the country's name to the cards going to EUROPE - and the next day excitedly go to the post office (a different one since it was on my way to where I was going...I see a counter with stamps so I ask the lady where could I mail my cards - she takes them, inspects the stamps and if the postage is sufficient - passed the test. And then she says 'but you also need to write the country;s name in Chinese'. Ok..wait, what?????!!!  (honestly, this thing did cross my mind but just crossed it since I remember most of the cards I had received from China, had something in Chinese near or below the name of the country) - I thought it may not be a real need to write them in Chinese but turns out I was wrong - first she couldnt read the names of the countries in English, I had to tell her that one was for Taiwan, and she was kind enough to write it down for me in Chinese, and that the rest were for Europe (which she had to look up on the phone for how to write it in Chinese) - yeah, she was helpful indeed, but I certainly cannot always go to the PO and ask for the people there to write the names in Chinese...so here is my clumsy attempt to do so...I still havent finished nor sent these, but makes me wonder if they are ever gonna reach their real destination - and before you ask me, no I absolutely do not know the names of the countries in Chinese - just relying on google here ....

so that's not really how I expected my first attempt of postcards sending to be :D  let's see what the outcome of this story is going to be...

Anyways, if you like one of these cards let me know and Ill try to mail one to you...if I manage to get your country's name right in Chinese that is :P 

Valentine's Day-hype in China

Walking through the streets of Guangzhou tonight (my initial idea was to go and see some of the Lantern Festivals' performances), I ended up being amused by the hundreds and hundreds of Chinese people celebrating Valentine's Day.
The streets were generally full with people holding boxes full of flowers, trying to sell them to the passers by.
It amuses me that Chinese people go crazy about all these Western holidays but the internet is still greatly censored and it sometimes takes magic to make websites like gmail, facebook, youtube, work properly...

well yeah....been really silent here for months...frankly I didn't expect it that I would be so unable to keep posting here, even if not regularly ...so yeah. life's been busy and tiring, but well, that's the price you have to pay for the experiences :)

in case you havent noticed I had renamed this blog into 'postcards and travels' since obviously for the time being it will be less postcards and more travel pictures + i bought a new camera just before New Year so at least I've been able to take some decent and worth-to-show pictures...so hopefully would be able to share those with you sooner or later...at least with those of you who are not on FB - I've already done my bragging share there :D

Anyways, hope you are all well...and if you are maybe wondering how come you still havent found a Chinese card from me in the mailbox..well cos I still havent sent any..finding postcards here has been a real challenge, and I actually dread going to the post office and asking for stamps with my still non-existent Chinese :D :D :D

Oh well....