Postcards from Sandvika

I grew up in Bærum outside of Oslo. The closest town-like assemblage of buildings to where I lived, and where my parents still live, is Sandvika. (The words town and village don't really apply to Norwegian settlement structures. :-) It's not much of a place - without its giant mall, the biggest in Scandinavia by number of stores, there wouldn't be much left to speak of. ;-) But as it is there are a lot of people stopping by there every day ... so of course there are some postcards available. Not a lot to choose from, but still. On a recent visit I picked up a few of these.

Top left: Løkke bridge across the Sandvika river, famous for being painted by the French painter Claude Monet on his visit to Norway. Top right: an aerial shot, but not entirely up-to-date ... the mall has been expanded since then. Sheesh. Bottom: the local shoe repair shop. The owner, Ingolf Kristiansen, is something of a local celebrity, he does a lot for the community and is an all-around unusual fellow. :-)

Shopping in Oslo

A couple of weeks ago I had two Japanese tourists come to stay on a brief visit ... I took them to some of the most important tourist spots (guess which ones ;-) and of course, while we were there, I took the opportunity to do some postcard shopping. :-)

At the Nobel Peace Center ...

At the Viking Ship House ...

And at the Folk Museum.

Swap #2

My second successful swap was also initiated by me, but actually not as a swap ... I just wanted to do something nice for a new Postcrosser. But that made him want to do something nice for me too. :-)

I was just surfing the site when I came across this user's profile. Kjell lives in Trondheim and collects stamps with frogs on them. He asked a rhetorical question in his profile - maybe there are postcards with frogs, too? He had never seen any, but he was open to the idea that there might be. :-) Coincidentally I had such a card in my collection, so I emailed him and told me that if he would send me his address, I would send him a frog card. :-)

He answered me almost immediately and was more than happy to give me his address. He also asked me to send along mine, so he could return the favor. I sent this card on November 9th.

On November 12th I got a letter and some photos in reply. V. cool reptile photos! It turned out that Kjell is a reptile fan like me. He'd taken the photos himself on vacation. I will do something fun with them ... but that'll be a story for another blog post. :-)

And seeing as how turtles are some of his favorite reptiles, I may be sending him another card one of these days too. Watch this space. ;-)