Nothing more dutch than a windmill

Windmills are one of the symbols of the Netherlands. They were really important to provide energy for pomps for drying out the land. Some of the sourses says that there was about 10 000 windmills in Holland in 19th century. Right now they are undoubtly a huge tourist magnet :)

Books

This official postcard from Finland made my day. I love reading- I can't live without books. I'm not sure how  many books I've read in my life but it's a lot for sure. My favorite one is "Master and Margarita" written by Mihail Bulhagov. Recently I've totally fallen for Jose Saramago Books- he is magician of words for me. Anyway time for postcard:

Poppy pot

 It's my second card from the Ukraine from official postcrossing draw and the second that I love! Poppies are amazing flowers- delicate and strong in the same time. Usually they have 4-6 petals and they can be almost any colour but of course the most popular are the red ones. Those beautiful flowers are symbol of sleep and death due to opium effects and bloody-red colour. 

Taiwan

My official card from Taiwan sent by 17-years old girl :) Firstly I was dissapointed cos I saw many wonderful postcards from this country and I was expecting something different. But I've changed my mind- this card is interesting and I love the paper it was printed on- thick with nice facture.

Japanese crescent

That card defienietly made my day- I'm smiling all the time!!! This is official postcard that took 5 days to arrive from Japan to Poland- quite impressive! It shows beautiful moon. It's hard to believe that something as magical, beautiful and interesting as the Moon is just a piece of rock...

Harumi  wrote this postcard on Tanabata Day which is the Star Festival. She wrote me very beautiful but also sad legend. Two stars- Vega, a weaving girl and Altair, cowhead boy loved each other. They were spending all the time together therefore they stopped working hard which caused the King's anger. As a punishment he has separated them by the Milky Way. They were only allowed to meet once a year across the Milky Way and that day is 7th of July...

Kentucky

Postcrossing official US-1135051

I recieved that beautiful card from Amy and Ella via postcrossing. Kentucky is actually a commonwealth (only 3 more- Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are constituted as a commonwealth). The state was a part of Virginia but since 1792 it became the 15ths state to join the Union. Amy mentioned in the card that Kentucky is known as Bluegrass State due to the fact that bluegrass covers many of the pastures in the state. In my opinion the state could be known as 'deer and turkey state' as the number od those animals per person is the highest in the whole States. Kentucky is known for coalmining, horse racing, throughbres horses, bourbon, bluegrass music and tobacco. The name of the state (as in many other cases) comes  from native tribes. One of the biggest tourist attractions is Mammoth Cave National Park but  I will write about it soon as I recieved another wonderfull postcard showing one of the caves :) If I ever go to Kentucky I'll surely visit Cumberland Falls State Park due to moonbows or lunar rainbows that can be regulary seen over there! Johny Depp was born in Kentucky <3

The U.S. project combo

private swap from Jean-Claude

Arkansas is bounded on the north by Missouri; on the east by the Mississippi River, which separates it from Mississippi and Tennessee; on the south by Louisiana; and on the west by the plains of Oklahoma and Texas. In size, it stands 27th among the states, with an area of 53,187 square miles. Of these, over 600,000 acres are lakes with 9,740 miles of streams.   The term Arkansas means south wind and is derived from a name used by some Native Americans to describe the Quapaws, an early tribe in the area. The French Jesuits pronounced the tribe name Oo-gaq-pa, which the Algonquins pronounced Oo-ka-na-sa, and Marquette wrote Arkansoa; LaSalle wrote Arkensa; DeTonti, Arkancas; and LaHarpe, Arkansas. When the state was admitted to the Union in 1836, it was spelled Arkansas. The legislature of 1881 appointed a committee to ascertain the rightful pronunciation of the last syllable, and the result was a resolution declaring the pronunciation to be Ark-an-saw.

private swap from Jean-Claude

North Carolina is the country's largest furniture, tobacco, brick and textile producer. Another important industries are metalworking, chemicals and paper. The agriculture is based on tobacco, corn, cotton, hay, peanuts and vegetable crops. For tourists the most interesting are Great Smoky Mountains, Blue Ridge Parkway, Cape Hatteras Nationa Seashores, National Military Parks...

Postcrossing official US-1112669

Michigan- Great Lakes Region. Even the name of the state means large water -mishigamaa in Ojibwe- the indigenous language. The state has 64,980 inland lakes and ponds. It is also the only state consisting entirely of two peninsulas. No wonder there is a fisherman on the postcard. By the way- this is my first official postcrossing postcard :)

Postcard from my friend Ulbert 

Welcome to the mountain west! Arizona is the 48th state and last of the contiguous states admitted to the Union, achieving statehood on February 14, 1912. Arizona is noted for its desert climate, exceptionally hot summers, and mild winters. In addition to the Grand Canyon, many other national forests, parks, and monuments are located in the state, while more than a quarter of its territory is Federal Trust Land which serves as the home of the Navajo Nation, the Hopi tribe, the Tohono O'odham and Apache people and various Yuman tribes, such as the Yavapai, Quechan and Hualapai.

Sent by Dustin

The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State or OSU, is a public research university located in Columbus. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States. Ohio State currently has over 425,000 living alumni located around the world. Ohio State alumni include Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, and Medal of Honor recipients, ambassadors, as well as Fortune 500 CEOs and members of the Forbes 400 list of the world's wealthiest individuals.

Finland

A nice postcard recieved from Tiia, from Finland. I like this one both for the photo and for the text on the back taking absolutely all of the space. Tiia is quite an interesting person I must say. Thank you for a great postcard!

Mailboxes

I love this postcard! I saw it on postcrossing gallery and I liked it a lot. It was wonderful finding this postcard in my mailbox especially that it's official postcrossing one. Lera totally made my day! Thank you very much!

postcard from Lera

That made me think about mailboxes. Can you believe I don't have one? I moved in to the house in the village and I still haven't got a mailbox. Postman just wait for someone to pick it up or he puts them on the fence ;)


The idea of mailboxes comes from France. First of them are believed to show up in Paris in 1653. During the 19th centary they were installed all over the world. Usually there is a standard colour for the mailboxes in every country. In Poland it is red. Also green, dark blue and yellow are popular in other countries. In some countries colour indicates the type of letter that can be put inside- in Poland we used to have green boxes for the letters travelling in the region and red one for all of the others.


Post boxes come with different shapes and sizes. In Russia in the past they were made out of  cast iron which was a protection from being stolen cos they weighted up to 45 kg. The main idea is to protect the letters from weather conditions and from the thefts.

Brigadeiro de Brasil

It was a great suprise for me to see this in my mailbox:

That's the postcrossing official postcard from Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. It shows Guanabara Bay and the Sugar Loaf - the hill/island that can be seen there. I think the photo was taken from the statue of  Christ the Redeemer.

Girl who sent it was really nice and instead of "happy postcrossing" she decided to write the recipe for the most famous and traditional dessert- Brigadeiro which looks like this:

I will try the recipe soon and I hope it will look at least partially as amazing as it looks at the photo. 

I was complaining recently that my official postcards are taking long time to arrive to me. If they are all as nice as this one I think it's worth waiting for!

Obrigado Eliana!