Received card #42

My 42nd card came from Germany ... from a town called Kraichtal, that I'd never heard of before. But now I know that it's in Baden-Württemberg. :-)

The card shows various views from around town ... it looks like a beautiful place. Silke and I apparently have some things in common - she is a Keanufan too, loves to read and to eat chocolate. ;-) A sensible person, in other words! :-D

This card was sent on January 20th, it traveled 1,205 kilometers in three days and arrived in my mailbox on January 23rd.

Received card #41

My 41st card arrived from Näsijärvi in Finland. I'm sorry to say that I had no earthly idea where that was. :-) But now I know that it's not too far from Tampere. You can always learn something new through Postcrossing ... ! :-)

Saara works at a post office - what a perfect job for a Postcrosser! :-) - and she wrote on the card in Swedish, which I of course can read. I can't read Finnish though ;-) but Saara translated the text on the card for me. It says Just for you - personally.

The card was sent on January 20th, and it took three days to cover its 731-kilometer journey; it arrived in my mailbox on January 23rd.

Received card #40

My 40th card arrived from a town I think I've heard of, but I may be wrong - Bowling Green, Kentucky, USA. It shows a very small section of a place called Mammoth Cave, which is considered the biggest known cave in the world. How cool is that. :-)

Monica is a Terry Pratchett fan like me, and her favorite of his books is Good Omens, which he cowrote with Neil Gaiman. I agree, I really can't recommend that book enough. :-)

The card was sent on January 9th, it traveled 6,905 kilometers in nine days to reach me on January 18th.

The Art of the Postcard

Back in November, I came across a post on the Postcrossing forum where a member was asking to be sent postcards for a project he was working on. Kerry Jeffrey is the postmaster of the small town of Cornelius in Oregon, and he was planning an exhibition of postcards from all over the world in the lobby of the post office. :-) I immediately decided to contribute.

Since Cornelius apparently is known for its blueberries, I decided to send my trusty berry card. I sent it ... on the 12th of November, I think.

The card arrived safely and became part of the exhibition, which opened on January 11th and which you can see lots of pictures from here. The prize was that everyone who sent a card and included their address would get a card back, and I did, on January 19th. Neat. :-)

A great idea for a local project. I would love to see my post office do something like that. :-)

Received card #39

My 39th card came from Trimley St Martin outside of Felixstowe in the east of England. From the pictures on the card the latter looks like a very charming town. :-) But it's also Europe's busiest container port - I didn't know that, so I learned something new from this card. :-)

David (who's #2 in the UK!) also told me about a film made in Felixstowe - some friends of his made it, it was called The Lost Sock and was about aliens landing on the pier. :-D I think I'd like to see that film ... ;-)

The card was sent on January 13th and reached me in only three days, after traveling 1,060 kilometers.

Received card #38

Not too long before receiving this card, I'd done a swap with a Russian, Genia in St Petersburg ... so it was a real coincidence when only a week and a half later an official card arrived from there too. :-) Tania sent this fun card with cute doggies. It's a really nice painting. The title is The February, apparently. :-)

The card was sent on January 4th, and it traveled 1,090 kilometers in 11 days to arrive in my mailbox on January 15th.

Sent card #46

Part of the Postcrossing system is that you never send to the same address twice, and you never receive from the person you send to. However, at least the latter sometimes happens anyway, as I can vouch for. :-) In early January I got a card from Tanja in Turku, Finland, and then, only ten days later, I pulled her address as the destination for my 46th card. How is that possible? Because Tanja has three PX accounts, but the system thinks she is three different users. :-) So on January 15th, I sent her this card, showing some views of the Vigeland Park, one of the main tourist attractions here in Oslo.

Tanja is interested in seeing things that are special to the sender's city or country, so I thought she would like this card.

It had 640 kilometers to travel, and it covered the distance in four days to arrive on January 19th. Tanja's added it to her favorites, so my assumption was correct. ;-)

Received card #37

My 37th card was also my first card from Poland. Yay. :-) I had sent to there once, but not received ... so that was really cool. :-) Joanna sent me this multiview card from her home town of Poznán, where she is a university student. A really nice card IMO - a great variety of images on it. :-)

This card was sent on January 7th, and traveled 918 kilometers in seven days to arrive in my mailbox on January 14th.

Received card #36

Another card from Finland! :-) This time from Nurmijärvi. Now that place I know I'd never heard of. :-) It's just outside Helsinki, apparently ... I have now learned. :-)

This card was a freebie that Pirjo had picked up at a postcard convention. Ooh, a postcard convention ... !! I haven't ever heard of one of those in this country. Those Finns, they really have it going on. Now it's my dream to go to a postcard convention one day. :-)

Pirjo was a little worried that I might mind getting a free card, but I don't ... I don't care whether a card has been bought in a store or picked up for free or made by hand ... as long as it's something that the sender thinks I will appreciate, or something that is important to that person, then I'll be happy with that card. And this card was really pretty too. :-) It's actually kind of fun, because in August when I was at my family's cabin in the mountains, I took lots of photos of mushrooms - for some reason I was really into photographing mushrooms just then. It really slowed us down on hikes. :-D So now I have a lot of mushroom shots that are just lying around. Maybe I should make some postcards with them?? :-)

This card was sent on January 9th. It traveled 779 kilometers in five days to arrive on January 14th.

Received card #35

My 35th card arrived from Hyvinkää in Finland. A place I don't think I'd ever heard of ... but that's one of the great things about Postcrossing, you learn about all sorts of places you never knew existed. :-)

The card was unusual in that it's printed on slightly textured paper. A first for me. :-) The picture shows some beautiful colorful sunflowers which were very cheerful in a wintry dark & cold Oslo. :-)

The sender, who calls herself DennyDuck, wrote that she was planning to move to Norway a while back, but then got into nursing school in Finland, so she stayed there. But she was planning to move here. It's a small world. :-)

The card was sent on January 11th, or maybe the 10th, and it covered its 783 kilometer journey in two, or maybe three, days :-) to arrive in my mailbox on January 13th.

Received card #34

My 34th card came from Pempelfort in Düsseldorf in Germany, and it was kind of a surprise to me ... because only a few days earlier, I had already got a card from this same guy. :-D So I was surprised to see his distinctive handwriting on another card soon afterwards. The first card came from a swap on Swap-bot, and nordbaer had noticed the coinkydink too. :-) I was so thrilled with the card, because I had never expected to receive one like it ... I do have The X Files listed as one of my favorite TV shows on my profile, but I'd never thought that I would really get an X Files postcard. But wouldn't you know, someone had one! Yay!! It was a wonderful treat for me and I loved finding it in my mailbox. :-)

The card was sent on January 6th and it traveled 997 kilometers in six days, to brighten my afternoon on January 12th. :-)

Received card #33

My 33rd card arrived from Saint-Quentin in France. My, let's see, second card? from France. And like the first one, I don't think I'd heard about the town it came from, but couldn't say for sure. :-)

This unusual and really neat card was sent by Corinne on January 7th. It had 1,217 kilometers to travel, and it covered the distance in only four days to arrive on January 11th.

Sent card #45

My 45th address was in the Netherlands ... oddly enough, having sent what feels like a lot of cards there ;-) this was the first time I'd be sending to Amsterdam. So that was cool, because A'dam is a great city and I've really enjoyed all my visits there.

Laura is interested in various things to do with art and culture and folklore and traditional crafts ... that set me to thinking and I dug this card out of my stash. It seemed to be perfect for Laura. :-)

This card shows a detail from one of the most magnificent items that were found in the Oseberg ship grave - a decorated bucket. :-) It's from ca 830 AD. A beautiful work of art.

I sent the card on January 11th, it had 914 kilometers to travel and arrived after seven days, on January 18th. Laura liked it a lot, so yay. :-)

Sent card #44

My 44th address was in Australia - I was happy to see that, because I'd never sent a card down under before. :-) A new country to add to my list. :-)

Glenda is a pretty new Postcrosser and hadn't gotten a lot of cards at the time, so I was happy to send to her. She doesn't have a lot of information on her profile though - nothing listed by way of likes and/or dislikes - so I decided to send her this flower card. I figured that that couldn't possibly offend anyone. :-)

I sent the card on January 9th. It had an amazing 13,839 kilometers to travel, and it covered the distance in 11 days to arrive in Craigie in Perth on January 20th.

Here's a fun coinkydink: A while back I got this great card from Belarus. Check this out - Glenda got another card in the exact same series from a totally different person in Belarus on the same day she got my card. :-D It's a small world after all ... !! :-D

Swap #11

My 11th swap was initiated by me, just because I came across Bridget's profile while surfing the site one day and really liked her screen name - PoetryCat - and also quite liked her profile. Plus, I had a card that I thought she'd really like. :-) She was interested in swapping too, so I sent my card off to Atascadero in California in the US on November 11th. So fun to send to someone there - it's the sister city of Roanoke, Virginia where a good friend of mine lives. :-)

It took a really long time before anything was sent in return, because unfortunately Bridget got sick in the meantime. But AFAIK she's doing better now, and of course I didn't at all mind waiting ... especially not when it turned out that when her end of the swap did arrive, I got three cards instead of one! :-o First the lovely home made dragonfly card and the American bison on January 7th, and then the desert landscape on January 9th. Fantastic. :-)

Since she was so sweet and sent me two extra cards, I decided to send another one back to her. I sent this one on January 12th. It hasn't arrived yet, or at least I haven't heard anything from her to indicate that it has, but I think she'll like it. :-) It matches one of the first items on her list of interests perfectly. :-)

I got this card at the Folk Museum here in Oslo ... it shows three women in bunad, traditional Norwegian folk dresses, standing in front of the original gate to the Museum, back when it was the Collections of King Oscar II.

Sent card #43

My 43rd address was in Gera in Germany ... a town I don't think I'd heard of before. Germany's a big country. :-) Isabel lists landscapes on top of her list of preferences in postcards, so I decided to send her my own Rondane card. On the card I told her a little about the area and my family's connection to it.

I sent the card on January 7th. It traveled 1,009 kilometers to be registered as received after 11 days, on January 18th.

V. cool when this card arrived - it was my 40th card registered as received, and after this I can have 7 cards traveling at once. Yay. :-)

Swap #10

My 10th swap was initiated by the other user ... he, or maybe it's they, saw this card that I'd sent to Finland and emailed me asking me to swap them one of those. Fortunately I had more of these cards ... which are actually freebies from way back. The photo on them shows one of the beautiful granite statues in the Vigeland Park here in Oslo.

Postcrossing user KMBK is actually a postcard museum ... it's in ... Hegyfalu, I think, maybe. :-) The museum was established in 2001 and I guess they're constantly looking for new items to display. I was happy to contribute a card from Norway, and I sent it on December 15th. On January 5th I got back not just one card, but two from Hungary. My first card from there - neat. :-) If you're a Postcrosser and you want to contribute to the museum's collection, I'm sure they'd be happy to hear from you. :-)

Received card #32

My 32nd card came from Turku in Finland, which was really nice because I have a BookCrossing friend who lives there, and even though I've gotten more cards from Finland than from any other country, this was the first I'd gotten from Turku. So that was really nice. :-)

Tanja sent a typical tourist card with a nice view from the harbor, which again was very nice since I've never been there myself. But my friend I guess has probably seen this very view. :-) She - ie Tanja :-) - wrote that Turku is the oldest town in Finland, founded about 800 years ago.

The card was sent on December 30th and arrived in six days, on January 5th, after a journey of 640 kilometers.

Sent card #42

My 42nd card went to Emily in Johnstown in Pennsylvania in the US. She doesn't have a lot of info on her profile, so choosing a card was kind of tricky ... :-) I picked an art card showing a flower, which I figured couldn't be wrong for anyone. :-)

The card shows a painting called Chrysanthemum by the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian.

I sent the card on January 5th. It had 6,219 kilometers to travel and arrived after 15 days, on January 20th.

Received card #31

My 31st card was my 2nd from Belarus, and also the 2nd bird of prey card I'd received in a short time. Neat. :-) This picture is from the Biosphere Reserve Belavezhskaya Pushcha, which is partly in Belarus and partly in Poland, and is also a Unesco World Heritage site. It sounds like a wonderful place. :-)

Natalia from Minsk chose the card for me because I like wild animals and nature. Good call. :-) She sent the card on December 30th and it traveled 1,216 kilometers in five days to reach me on January 4th.

Swap #9

This swap was initiated by me and the other user both. :-) I was just surfing the site and I came across this card, which I thought was just beautiful ... so I commented to say as much, and added it to my favorites wall. Soon after I got an email from the sender, Genia in St Petersburg, asking if I wanted to swap. Sure! I asked if he could get me the card I'd favorited. Obviously, if he couldn't, no problem, he could just send something else. He wanted a card showing some of the beautiful nature here in Norway. I picked this one, from northern Norway. I sent it on December 17th.

On January 4th, I got an envelope from Russia ... I was surprised to see an envelope, because I had just been expecting one card. But Genia had sent two, because he thought it was a little sad that his card of the Bronze Horseman wouldn't be a surprise to me. So he'd added another card too. How sweet! :-) I'm thinking of something else to send to him in return. :-)

Some very nice stamps too, on the envelope.

Sent card #41

My 41st address was in Russia ... my second card to Russia, but this one to Moscow, so rather less exotic than the first one. :-) Alexander is interested in anything to do with postal history, such as post offices, letterboxes, stamps ... so I decided to send this card, which shows all the stamps that were released in 2005 by the Norwegian Mail.

I didn't have any of these cards newer than 2005, but I was hoping he'd like this anyway. :-)

I sent the card on January 2nd. It had 1,649 kilometers to travel, and took 34 days to arrive on February 5th. When it did, Alexander said it was perfect. Yay!! :-)

Received card #30

My 30th card arrived from Sweden - and, weirdly, this was the first card I'd either received or sent from there. I'm sure it's not very rational but I just feel that since Sweden is practically next door, I should be getting some either cards or addresses :-) ... but then again, why should I? Sweden is in fact below Norway in Postcrossing terms - we're 28th in terms of activities, while they're 'only' 34th. And I've never gotten either a card or an address from Norway. :-)

Anyway, I was happy to get a Swedish card, that's the point I'm getting at. Emma's profile I'd actually looked at before, and - seriously - thought that at one point I may well get a card from her. She is the #1 Postcrosser in Sweden. And yeah, I was right, here's the proof. :-)

This fun Christmas card was sent from Tumba at Christmas :-) and arrived on New Year's. It had traveled 406 kilometers ... a new record for me, the shortest distance any of my received cards has traveled. :-)

Sent card #40

My 40th card went to Austria - another country I hadn't sent to before, or at least, not officially. :-) Elfriede appreciates any card she gets and has never received a postcard she didn't like. :-) I sent her an art card, and I sent it in an envelope so that she could use the stamp to add to her stamp collection ... because like me she would never remove a stamp from a postcard, only from an envelope. ;-)

I sent the card on New Year's Eve and it had 1,351 kilometers to travel, a distance it covered in five days to arrive in Vienna on January 5th.

Received card #29

My 29th card arrived from Tartu in Estonia. I'd sent to Estonia before, but hadn't received from there, so that was nice. :-) The card itself wasn't from Estonia though, but from Gran Canaria. :-) Heli had just been on vacation there, in a toasty warm 25 degrees centigrade ... only to return to 24 below in Estonia. o_O I would have preferred the Spanish temperature too ... ! :-D

The card was sent on ... the postmark says December 27th, but it was written on the 24th, and of course there are some holidays in between there, so it's hard to say when it was mailed exactly. :-) But it arrived in my mailbox on December 29th, having traveled 931 kilometers.

Received card #28

My 28th card came from Australia via Germany. :-) Melanie from Speyer had been down under recently and of course had shopped for postcards ... and I guess she picked this great card for me because I mention reptiles on my profile. Check out this thorny devil ... !! :-D

This card was sent on December 21st, and it covered 1,187 kilometers in eight days to arrive on December 29th.

Sent card #39

Card #39 would be going to Lithuania ... another first country for me. Beata lives in Vilnius, the capital, and is a new Postcrosser. She had two cards listed as sent but had received none, so my card would probably be her second or even first card. Yay. :-)

Beata likes nature and wants to see something interesting and perhaps not well known about the sender's country, so I picked this card with a view of Rondane national park. My own shot. Rondane is the oldest national park in Norway and very famous here, but I don't think it's very well known in Lithuania. ;-)

I sent the card on December 29th. It had 1,046 kilometers to travel and took a fortnight to cover that distance to arrive on January 12th. It was the first Postcrossing card Beata had received, so yay. :-)

A plethora of postcards

I spent Christmas with my parents at their house in Bærum outside of Oslo. On my last day there my mother brought out her stash of postcards - some of which are getting seriously on in years ;-) and said I could pick the ones I wanted. She is a Postcrosser too but a very slow one ... I signed her up and she hasn't been quite as hooked as I'd hoped. But there you go, all the more for me. :-) I didn't take all the cards, far from it, even though I know how it must look ... :-)

Sent card #38

Card #38 turned out to be my third Postcrossing card involving Spain ... I have received one card from there, sent one, and now I got to send one more - to an area I at first thought I had visited once upon a time, but then I realized that in fact I have not. :-) The only time I was in Spain I was very young, only about eight years old, so my memory sometimes fails me. :-) Arturo lives in El Campello near Alicante, and the entirety of his profile text is in Spanish ... so that was a bit of a challenge for me, but I managed to make out that he loves getting postcards and that he's aspiring to a big collection of them :-) and that what he likes the most is reading the cards when they arrive and thinking of the journeys they have been on. I know how he feels! :-) I picked this very touristy card which shows six different views of Norway ... mountains and fjords. :-)

I sent the card on December 28th. It traveled 2,516 kilometers in one week to arrive on January 4th.

Sent card #37

My 37th address was in Finland again ... in that nation's capital, Helsinki. Auli has a huge list of interests on her profile, and on it I found one thing we have in common - we both love chocolate. ;-) So I picked this delicious card to send to her. When it arrived she found it quite tasty-looking too. ;-)

I mailed this card off on December 28th. It had 789 kilometers to travel, which distance it covered in only three days to arrive on December 30th. Impressive! :-)

Postcards for Christmas

I even got some postcards as Christmas presents - one from a Postcrossing friend, but most of them from a friend who I don't think even knows that I am a Postcrosser. So what an incredible stroke of luck. :-)

The full color card is from my best friend and shows the building in which our constitution - the second oldest constitution in the world that is still in use - was drafted and signed. My best friend lives almost in the neighborhood. :-) The black and white ones are from my American friend Vickie Holt in Roanoke, Virginia ... they show various moments from the history of Roanoke, from the period 1890 through 1942. How cool is that. :-)

Thanks to both of them, I really appreciate it. :-)

Sent card #36

My 36th card went to Taiwan just before Christmas. :-) Kai-Jen is from Taipei and is a pacifist - and as soon as I read that, I knew exactly which card to send to him. :-) On the card I told him a little bit about myself, and also included the greeting God jul og godt nytt år, which is Merry Christmas and a happy new year in Norwegian. All according to Kai-Jen's wishes, of course.

This card was bought at Tronsmo, the best bookstore in Oslo ... and, according to Neil Gaiman, one of the best in the whole world. :-)

I sent the card on December 23rd. It had 8,704 kilometers to travel, and arrived on January 8th, after 16 days. Kai-Jen liked it a lot. :-)

Sent card #35

My 35th card went to the Netherlands again. Loes lives in Leeuwarden (Mata Hari's home town ;-) and has a really great profile on Postcrossing. :-) Not sure I can explain why but I really like her profile. :-) She's a pretty new user and my card would be the first PX card she'd receive; I got her address on December 21st; I requested an address right after Loes' first sent card had been registered as received by AnnaR in Finland. I love watching the Postcrossing system in action like that. :-) It's the third time this has happened to me and I think it's so great every time. :-)

I sent Loes one of my own creations from moo.com. I hoped she'd like it. :-)

I sent the card on December 22nd. It had 805 kilometers to travel and took a long time to get there - 16 days! It arrived on January 6th. But I guess the Christmas rush may have played a part there. :-)

DIY postcards and more

I love my postcards from moo.com that I wrote about in an earlier blog post. Moo also has other great products that I was very interested in. So when they offered a free shipping deal on orders made in November, I couldn't resist. :-) I got some more postcards ...

... some stickers with my own photos too, nine different ones in a booklet of 90 ...

... some of their MiniCards, which are about half the size of standard business cards and can be printed with the photo or artwork of your choice on one side, and with whatever text you want on the other. They come in packs of 100, and I uploaded 49 photos, so I got two of each design + a couple of extras. :-) On the text side (which of course you have the option of leaving blank) I put the urls for my main blog, my Youtube channel, my photostream on Flickr and a couple more places. :-) Adorable MiniCards ... !

... that come in a box for easy storage. And I bought a holder to carry them in, too. V. handy. ;-)

And finally of course I couldn't resist their Mosaic Frame, which lets you create art *cough* out of your MiniCards. It's just too cool. I had to have it. :-)

I ordered all of this on November 30th, and my order arrived in two packages, on December 15th and 16th. Pretty good in the Christmas rush. :-)

And just to make it absolutely clear, I totally love all my new stuff and am genuinely impressed with the quality this company delivers. I recommend them strongly to anyone considering purchasing this kind of product.