Kaoshiung, Mezdurecensk & New York

When I created this blog back in January I was excited to share my postcards and thoughts however...life happens and it turns out mine became insanely busy! With purchasing my first home, getting a new job and expanding my family...no no no not a baby, I mean  more animals! My life has been extremely hectic these past few months. The purchase of our house was a life changing experience. My husband and I were renting this 500 square feet cottage of a house that we loved dearly, however us plus our five animals became a bit much. Our only option really was to buy because who in their right mind would rent to a couple of hippies with 5 animals in tow? Our search was frustrating and stressful but we found our house and we love it dearly!

Here is a photo from the winter:

I love it because it's old; built in 1912, has a beautiful porch, plenty of space for our family and it's clearly a Winnipeg West End home. I love it. However... I do not love home maintenance and the fact that I cannot call my old landlord Peter to come and fix something when it breaks. After a few headaches which included updating all the electrical, we are nice and settled into our home. Which brings me to the point of this story, I am ready to continue my blog! Wooooo!

Back in January I had just begun www.postcrossing.com and just had a handful of postcards to choose from but now I have dozens upon dozens! My office displays many of my postcards, I hang them on hemp string with clothes pins. It looks lovely, I'll show a picture sometime. I also like it because I can change it up whenever I get new postcards. Since I have so many postcards now and they just keep coming I thought I'd cover three postcards in each blog. This blog will feature postcards that I received from Shatokhina who lives in Mezdurecensk, Russia; Sharlor who lives in Kaoshiung, Taiwan;  and Juanita who lives in New York, USA.

Here is the first postcard from Shatokhina:

This postcard is a photo of Khokhloma which is Russian wood painting that is known for it's vivid colors and floral designs. Most art historians date back the origin of the Khokhloma painting style to the 17th century. At that period the northernmost lands of the Nizhni Novgorod province were just starting to recover after the desolation brought by the Mongol invaders. New settlers moved into the ravaged area beyond the Volga. The handicraft of manufacturing wooden utensils with peculiar decorative painting received the appellation of Khokhloma art from one of the villages where it originally had been practiced in ancient times and which grew to become a trading post to which the local craftsmen brought their wares for sale starting from the 18th century.

The Khokhloma style is normally a combination of the red, gold, and black. The three colors had a profound symbolism for decorating the sacred church vessels and the dishes and cups used in the monasteries and nunneries, as well as in icon ornaments. The red color represented the beauty, the gold color symbolized the spiritual heavenly light, while the black color signified the gracious grief cleansing the human soul. This postcard is one of my favourites. I love art and especially historic art.  Khokhloma is still very popular in Russia and is used to decorate anything from plates to wooden animals.

This is the postcard I received from Sharlor:

This is pretty self explanatory, it's a map of Taiwan. Honestly when I joined www.postcrossing.com I thought I'd receive bungles of postcards with maps of countries and regions but this is the only one I have received thus far which makes me appreciate it more then I think I would if I had a handful. What you can't see from my scan is that it's actually a puzzle. Each region is a different piece of the puzzle. It's quite neat, I've never seen a postcard like it before. I have to be very gentle with it otherwise the pieces might fall off.

There's not much I can say about this postcard except for on the back there is also a photo of the Taiwanese national flag:

In Chinese this flag is commonly described as blue sky, white sun and a wholly red earth. The twelve rays of the white sun represent the twelve months and the twelve traditional Chinese hours. The red earth was added later to signify the blood of the revolutionaries who sacrificed themselves in order to overthrow the Qing dynasty and create the Republic of China (Taiwan). Together the colours signify the three principles of the people: blue represents nationalism and liberty, white represents democracy and equality and red represents the people's livelihood and fraternity. Haha interesting...moving on...

The postcard I received from Juanita:

Yep, it's CATS! I absolutely love musicals and CATS is pretty close to the top of my list of favourite music from musicals. I mean who doesn't love the song Memory? I used to listen to it on repeat. CATS is such a favouite the London production ran for 21 years and the Broadway production for 18. It is the second longest running show in Broadway history and what I would give to see it in New York...

CATS is based on T.S. Elliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and is composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber. *Side note: I am listening to Nostalgia radio as I write this and The Moments of Happiness just came on...a bit eerie.* I have read bits and pieces of this book but not entirely. It's on my to read list. For me the story itself is all about the characters. They each have a different personality and traits, exactly like cats in real life. When I worked at the animal shelter (D'Arcy's ARC) one of my favourite things to do was naming the animals. I went threw various books, movies and musicals and then thought to myself... of course! CATS and named each new cat that came in after a character from CATS. People that didn't know CATS thought I was a bit off naming cats things like Rum Tug Tugger, Jellylorum and Jennyanydots. But people the knew the musical loved them and most that adopted those cats actually kept their names which pleased me. So needless to say this postcard remains in my top five. It is composed of three of the things I love most: musicals, cats and a good story.

And I leave this blog entry with a photo of one of my beloved cats, Dunigan. He is quite the character indeed and reminds me of Mongojerrie. A trouble maker.

HP
XO

I love postcards!

I absolutely love traveling. I love seeing how people live, hearing different languages, walking through unknown streets and getting lost, eating strange foods, hearing lovely music, waking up and knowing you're half way across the world from your bed... Traveling teaches me so much about the world and about myself. For instance, I do NOT like thousands of little birds flying above me. Which happened this past May in Corfu, Greece. Apparently Corfu is the place to be if you are VERY loud bat like birds. I DO however love German pastries. I could eat them everyday...two everyday...probably more. They are delicious! 

I am lucky to have visited many different places but still wish that I could wander more unknown roads all over the world. Don't get me wrong, I love love love Winnipeg. Of course I complain about the Winter and our cruddy lack of democracy within our Government, but hey what Winnipeger doesn't? After a trip I am always happy to come home. 

As much as I adore Winnipeg my urge to travel and explore pumps through my veins. This is why I was so excited when I stumbled upon postcrossing.com. If you are into traveling and postcards this website is a must! The gist of it is you get to send and receive postcards from all over the world! Neat hey?! I have been using this site for about two months and now have a handful of postcards. I am going to use this blog to showoff and display my received gifts from around the world. Super!

Let's get started!

Since it was Christmas time when I started postcrossing the first two cards I received were Christmas postcards. I was a bit disappointed. The first one was from New Hampshire USA...blah. Uber disappointed with that one. Not as worldly as I had hoped. However although the second postcard was also a Christmas one it did come from Hyvinika, Finland. Okay getting better... The third postcard I received was this one:

So cute right?! Look at the little bears! Aw! This card traveled all the way from Martin who lives in Bern, Switzerland. Since I am fluent in French he wrote on the postcard in his native language. He explained to me that these bears are kept in what is called Barengraben (Bear Den) and they are the mascots of Bern. After reading upon the Barengraben I started to feel sad. 

This is some of the information I found on Barengraben: 

Bears have enjoyed-or suffered a long and rather one-sided relationship with Switzerland's capital of Bern. According to one legend, Berthold V of Zähringen named the Bern after the first animal killed during a hunt when the city was founded in 1191. (If the story is true, the Duke must have decided to honor the victim's entire species, since "Bären" is the German plural form of "bear.")

The 1923 edition of Muirhead's Switzerland explains: 

"Whatever be the real connection of the words 'bear' and 'Bern,' the figure of a bear occurs in the oldest known city seal (1224), and living bears have been kept in Bern at the town's expense since 1513 (except for a brief interval when the French removed them to Paris in 1798)."

A picture of Barengraben circa 1800:

Poor bears! I was so excited about this card because it wasn't Christmas related AND it was worldly but after doing  the research I was left sadden. But! There is a somewhat happy ending! After reading some more I gladly stumbled upon the information that the Barengraben was closed in 2009 and instead it is now Baerenpark. It is a lovely park that is 6000m2 and is along the banks of the River Aare. The bears can now be seen enjoying the outdoors. The bears still have access to the bearpit which is now a historical monument. The idea of someone making money off captivated animals being viewed by the public makes me cringe but this is much better then having them live in a concrete pit! 

So these were my first experiences with postcrossing and receiving postcards from around the world. Although not ideal nor what I was expecting it I learned a lot about a place I knew nothing about. My experiences have since gotten delightfully better, keep checking back for more postcards!

HP

xo