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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. :-)

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.

Received card #27

This card arrived on December 18th, but wasn't registered till the 22nd. My computer was still in the shop and on top of that, I was sick and couldn't go in to work, so couldn't register it there either. But I registered it the first chance I got. :-)

Mandy is an American, she comes from Ohio, but she lives in Nanjing in China where she works as a teacher. She's in China's top fifty. Nice. :-) She wrote that she chose this card for me because I like pictures from nature. And, yeah, wow. An amazing animal. I've seen them in real life a couple of times, but only in captivity.

According to Mandy, these are the top three things to see in Nanjing: Purple Mountain, Confusius' temple and the downtown area/city center. :-)

This card was sent on December 1st, and it traveled 7,897 kilometers in 17 days.

Received card #26

This card as well was registered the day after it arrived, because my computer was in computer hospital. :-)

Elvira lives in Bayreuth in Germany. I'm sorry to say that prior to receiving this card, almost the entirety of my knowledge about her home town came from watching documentaries about the Third Reich. :-( But now I've read up on it a bit, so now I know at least a little bit more. :-) The card is absolutely brilliant, I love it - look, elephants!! :-D African plains elephants, it says on the card (in German :-). It looks vintage, I love it. Someone read my wishlist ... ! :-)

The card was sent on December 12th, and it traveled 1,110 kilometers to arrive in my mailbox on December 17th.

Received card #25

My 25th card arrived from the Netherlands on December 16th, but I couldn't register it till the next day because my computer had a bug and was in the shop. :-( It was a lovely card though - all about chocolate, which both I and the sender, Maud from Leek, absolutely love. :-) At first I thought the card was from a place I had visited myself, the Chocolate Museum in Brussels ... but a closer examination revealed that it was from the Chocolate Museum in Bruges, where I have not been. Those Belgians ... ! :-D

The card was sent on December 8th and traveled 797 kilometers in eight days.

Received card #24

My 24th card came from Denmark, where I hadn't gotten any cards from before ... or sent any cards to, for that matter. There's something weird about Denmark - there are more Danes than there are Finns (OK, not a lot more, but still) but even so there is nowhere near the same amount of activity in Denmark as there is in Finland, absolutely nowhere near. Not on Postcrossing, and I've seen the exact same thing on BookCrossing. It's so weird. Though maybe it's the Finns who are the weird ones? ;-)

Anyway, a Christmas card from Denmark. Solveig is #1 on both number of cards sent and longest distance sent from Denmark. More than 1,100 cards. Impressive. I guess having that many cards going out means you don't have time to write much on each one. Which is a big reason why I won't ever be in the top ten list. ;-)

This isn't really a postcard, but actually a notecard ... so it's square and because of that hard to photograph well. I couldn't manage a picture without all that table surface in it too. Alas. :-)

This card was sent on December 2nd and traveled 483 kilometers in one week to arrive on December 9th. I think that must be the shortest distance any of my PX cards has traveled so far. Still no cards to or from Sweden ... :-)

One thing that was really great was that Solveig had sealed the envelope with this 'Hopenhagen' sticker. Obviously the climate conference in Copenhagen was coming up when she sent the card. It's a very cool sticker and I really appreciate getting it. :-)

Received card #23

My 23rd card arrived from an extremely exotic place - Tahiti!! :-o Or to be correct, French Polynesia. This country is extremely rare in Postcrossing terms - my card was in fact only the 91st PX card ever sent from there. Lucky me!! :-) When I saw it, I could hardly believe where it had come from ... :-)

The sender of this card is the 2nd most active Postcrosser in French Polynesia. :-) I couldn't quite figure out where she lives ... Google Maps tell me it's a place called Windward Islands on Tahiti. Not sure that can be right. :-) But I love the card, regardless. It's so pretty, and it's traveled so far! It was sent on November 26th, and it covered its amazing journey of 15,037 kilometers in twelve days to arrive in my mailbox on December 8th.

Wow. :-)

My longest traveling received card so far, hands down.

The three best things about Tahiti, according to Jeminys: the natural beauties of the island, the kindness and friendliness of the people, and the cool lifestyle. :-)