Vacation postcards FROM/TO friends

     These two postcards are classical cards from vacation from friends, my husband's and mine, who don't know or don't care about that I do postcrossing - it is just common thing for them to send something to all friends. Both places seem like a wonderful spot for beach holiday. And Madeira also looks like having some natural beauty landscapes, good for hiking ^___^

both received from Dutch and Russian friends on vacation from Madeira, Portugal (left) and Alanya, Turkey (right)

     Another piece from this year's vacations is from my penpal, mondshein, from Tunisia. The previous something, I received from Tunisia, was also from her, and it was a real leaf! Sadly, the stamp on previous one got lost during the travel. Now the stamps arrived safe, along with the view postcard.

front side (top) and stamps (bottom), received from mondschein, while on vacation in Tunisia (direct swap)

     Our vacation this summer was quite humble - just going for a week to St. Petersburg, living in the center [super close to the central Imperial Post Office which reminds me the Post Office from Pratchett's 'Going Postal' and close to the St. Petersburg office of Publishing House Rusmarka, which produces and sells Russian stamps], walking in the beautiful parks, visiting ship museums, and eating in cool cafes and restaurants.

postcards, sent from little vacation in St. Petersburg - the thickness of a pile (left) and all of the fronts (right)

     Since it was very quiet vacation [and Post Office and Rusmarka's shop proximity] I decided to send as many postcards to friends and penpals as I can. So it was about 30-40 as it used to be on my vacations long ago. For all husband's friends we used nice old Weapon of Victory stamps with guns, and since we found nice cards with Putin, them too. All friends are now "scared" that they are on security service's watchlist.

some of the backsides - the ones with whole set of 'Weapon of the Victory' stamps, guns series, 2009

Perks of instant memory - officials from Russia [July, 2018]

     All these postcards are not likely to appear on any of my themed posts, but to be fair - they are all awesome and completely satisfy my wishlist! Kudos to the senders! First one is 'Icon Man', Electroboutique [an installation in Perm], photo by Ivan Kozlov [sadly, this name is far too common to find his personal website]. Second one is 'Hug or Die!' by Katya Zubkova, as a part of the project #myimaginarycat. The third one is Greek art postcard from one of the Art Museums in Munich, and I suppose it is one of the most decent ones.

left - RU-6581461, from Lyukaa, Russia; center - RU-6594740, from Julie_Jools, Russia; right - RU-6594790, from KsanaGanzha, Russia

     Next one is the weird and creepy woman from a vintage coffee advertisement. Well, maybe not so creepy, have you seen yourself with first cup of morning coffee? The last one is the hyaena from one of the biggest Zoos in Russia - Rostov Zoo [official site]. Even though I find the idea of Zoos a bit old-fashioned, the hyaena looks happy.

left - RU-6596174, from agarwaenn, Russia; right - RU-6595629, from boorun, Russia

Perks of instant memory: Asian Tigers' Cityscapes

     Let the instant memory posts become somewhat instant finally! I swear to finish and publish all of these, which were stuck in the drafts ^___^ As I nagged before, postcards from Asia are rarely truly strange or weird, but with the landscapes and cities they have there, it is not needed. Truly, all small states in the South East Asia - Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, - look like they are living in the Future already. But not in the fully bleak and unified Future, where all the cities look the same, whether they are in America, Europe or Asia, but saving some colours and spices of traditional culture. Like the adorable red paper lights, or old road signs with rapidly built skyscrappers on the background, or these futuristic Singapore's trees surrounded by the nature park 'Gardens by the Bay'.

left - TW-2532828, from FabienneTsai, Taiwan; center - HK-574974, from Charlespoon, Hong Kong; left - SG-272425, from PeggyLoh, Singapore

     And the Asian stamps - ever the amazing same - lots of them, different topics, very good srtists and designers, and impeccable colour/composition sense of the senders.

stamps of HK-574974, from Charlespoon, Hong Kong

Perks of instant memory: Tickets, space and city mascots

     Each city in Russia has a coat of arms, my city, for example, has squirrels and integrated circuit on it. Most of them are not very pretty, but Russian stamps publishing house issues nice small stamps with them regularly, my favorite one is Irkutsk's coat of arms with babrs [old Russian name for Siberian tiger, on the coat of arms it is holding a sable in his mouth]. Now I got a postcard with the statue of the coat of arms of Novosibirsk - sables holding a crown, and I love it a lot! [Novosibirsk does not have a stamp yet, only Novosibirsk region, which is very similar]. The stamps on the back of the card are from one of my favorite artists - Vrubel [received postcards with his paintings before], featuring his autoportrait and the Swan Princess.

front side (left) and stamps (right) of RU-6535867, from LadyInBlue, Russia

     Another received postcard is a sci-fi space battle scene with wonderfully decorated backside with funny poem: 'Dear space pilot, beware of Canes Venatici, and never fly out in outer space without clean underwear'. And the last one is very cute - featuring a cat in the bunny ears hat, similar to my avatar on official site profile, and has quite a bunch of bus tickets on the backside alongside with 2000's ticket to the museum.

front (left) and back side (right) of RU-6536035, from Matyazh, Russia

front (left) and back side (right) of RU-6535922, from prosto-kulakova, Russia

     UPD: Funny, that I found a postcard backside written also by Matyazh in the livejournal of my dear friend, azuregosa. The decoration is amazing, you would never guess the age and gender of the sender in a good way xD

Weird postcard: Frozen instruction

     Since the winter is here, one of the postcards has a solid advice how to behave when you are freezing. The front side says what not to do -- you should not drink vodka or alcohol [the Father Frost says 'Do you respect me?' - stereotypical phrase for alcoholics during drinking]. The backside gives detailed information on what you should do. (1) Transfer the harmed person into warm but not too hot room. (2) Take off all metal and other jewerly and accessories. (3) If a harmed person has a zone of pale skin - put a scarf around creating sort of a thermo cover. (4) If toes are frozen off, put fabric rolls between them. (5) Perfom procedures for general warming of the body. (6) Provide warm drink in a large volumes. The postcard is an ad card of the allsafety First Aid School.

front (left) and back side (right) of RU-6435452, from elka-ogonek, Russia

Handmade: Foodie couples exchange

     We noticed recently with my husband, that we can have deeper connection in friendship when another couple are also foodies. You have so much to discuss! When you cook something special for dinner - you both really enjoy and appreciate the effort. And you basically know all the nice places, can share tips, and even order food online together [we do such with Dutch cheeses - one Friesian company delivers up to 5 kilos of cheese in Russia for personal use]. Somehow it works for postcrossing too. I think, klemens_ku and her husband know their food [you can see from previous sent and received handmades - 1, 2, and 3, - we do not dispose the packages], as well as my husband and me [mostly from eating ^__^] know ours.

front (upper) and back (lower), received from klemens_ku, Russia (direct swap)

     So two handmades we exchanged recently are about food! The received one is a advertisement/ticket from the culinary courses, klemens_ku's husband attended. And sent is the special 11 course "classical" menu from St. Petersburg restaraunt Cococo [their website and instagram]. Funny enough, the most tasty thing on this menu for me, personally, was 'bread and butter', even though the presentation and tastes of all things on the menu was fabulous.

front (left) and back (right), sent to klemens_ku, Russia (direct swap)

Weird poster: Cybersportsman and Gopnik

     'How to make a personalized postcard' tip from azuregosa: (1) Pin the postcard near the pull-up bar in the office; (2) Wait till someone write something on it; (3) Profit! The original poster says 'Play sports!', added captions are 'cybersportsman' on the left and 'gopnik' on the right. And backside - 'videoblogger is the next stage of humanity development!'.

     That reminds me of the funniest video of the youtube channel, my husband watches for fun and for learning Russian swear words - 'Stop a Douchebag' movement. The movement specialized on catching the car drivers who break the rules, specifically in terms of illegal parking and restricting pedestrian traffic. The douchebag drivers frequently engage fights, hit- activists -and-try-to-run, threatening to call their influential friends, etc. But once the 'Stop a Douchbag' channel had a partner video with a bodybuilder's channel 'Body mania' :: apparently, when a big ripped guy asks you to move your car, you become extremely polite and actually move your car without any trouble and also say 'sorry' and 'thank you'.

front (left) and back side (right), received from azuregosa, Russia (direct swap)

Perks of instant memory: Simple card from Japan

     As most of postcards under the instant memory series of posts, this one is simple and cute. Somehow in the fall this year I was getting a lot of postcards from people with "similar-to-Russian" names - tomo8's name is Yuri, it sounds like a Russian male name. And every time this similarity thing happens, I hesitate to write it in a hurray-message, but never do - after all, it is irrelevant and might be even offending.

     La Folle Journée au Japon is a classical music festival started in 1995, Japan invites classical musician, each concert lasts about 45 minutes, and each year it is different theme. Somehow Japan holds a lot of interesting cultural things, another one is an event when a choir of 10K Japanese people sings the Ode to Joy of Beethoven 9th near the beginning of December [youtube of 2012 video, for example]. it is not easy to be one of the 10K, you have to go for lessons for 3 months.

front (left) and back side (right) of JP-1116597, from tomo8, Japan

THE MAMMOTHS!!! [rare postcards, about which I'm insanely happy]

     All postcard are from Zoological museum in St. Petersburg. Left one is a skeleton of Taimyr's mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius Blum.). The adult mammoth skeleton was found in 1948 by S. Zhigarev and A. Korzhikov on the left stream of creek Shrenk, Mammoth river, on the Taimyr penisula, the excavations were held in 1949 by the expedition of Zoological Institute of Science Academy of USSR and Glavsermorput under the supervision of professor L.A. Portenko. Skeleton with the remains of muscles, skin and wool was delivered in Leningrad. The age of the find by radiocarbon dating is about 11 450 years.

     The right one is famous Magadan's little mammoth "Dima" [also known as Kirgilyakh mammoth]. the rare find of the mammoth cub was made 23 June of 1977 in the Magadan's region, in the upper reaches of river Kolyma. When the bulldozer driver A.V. Logachev was preparing a place to wash gold in the river Kirgilyakh stream and was taking off another layer of ground, he found in the cryogenic lense the corpse of the little mammoth of age no more than 7 months. Considering the particularities of the burial, weak mammoth cub fell in the hole filled with water. Height of the Dima is 98 cm, weight, with taking the account the cryogenic dehydration, - 95 kilos. The looks of the mammoth have juvenal features - soft contures of head and body, relatively long legs. The colour of the wool is brown of yellow-ish, length of the wool hair is about 14 cm. All the internal organs were preserved but flattened and dehydrated. Complex scientific research conducted by the scientists of different countries gave unique materials of mammoth's anatomy, gystology, morphology, and biochemistry. The absolute age of the find is carbon dated as 39 000 years.

both received from ri17, Russia (LJ Favorites #12)

     The left one is a skeleton of the Berezov's mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius Blum.). The right one is the remains of the same mammoth [as far as I understood, the skin and fur were preserved pretty well - the mammoth even still had in his mouth the last grass he ate, only the front part was damaged by animals, because it was defrosted]. They were found by the Evens hunter Semyon Tarabykin on the bank of river Berezovka, right stream of the Kolyma river in the August, 1900. May, 3rd, 1901 the expedition of Imperial Academy of Science headed there, supervised by seniour zooligist of Zoological Museum O.F. Gerts. After the end of excavation in February, 1902, expedition transport arrived in Irkutsk, from where it was sent further to St. Petersburg. In 1903 the unique exhibit item was presented in the Zoological Museum of Imperial Academy of Science. The radiocarbon dating showed that absolute age of the Berezov's mammoth is about 44 000 years. The stuffed animal is made by S.K. Prikhodko and M.A. Kolin.

both received from ri17, Russia (LJ Favorites #12)

Some postcards to our creative friend [part #2]

     For the second batch of postcards [see first one] we introduced some alterations to the pictures and some more Russian language lessons. Left was originally the December, 1st - World AIDS Day. Right is 'Reach for prosperity!' poster by Victor Ivanov, 1949. The backside contained the second lesson at Russian swearing, positive swears, and couple of Russian pickup lines.

both sent to Air, USA (direct swap)

the close-up of the right postcard to see the volume of the felt hair on the postcard, sent to Air, USA (direct swap)

     What is pictured on the last postcard? FAKE: Agents Babushka, Klavdiya Petrovna, Chepiga's mother-in-law and Nha Tas Py are preparing for American Midterms. REAL: The sale of alcohol from individual entrepreneurs at Yaroslavl Railway Station in Mosocw, 1992.

sent to Air, USA (direct swap)

RAS-es from mondschein, Russia

     Lera, mondschein, is one of my favorite penpals. It is difficult to pick any of the good ones [I have so many - mondschein (Leroo), anra, Shaulalala, azuregosa, beesknees, loving6thgrade, mosaika, matkaleena, hedgehog_neff (neff), klemens_ku, my_nemi - i love so much all of them, the order of naming them is irrelevant, I love them equally,, they are the ones who brought me through the darkest times of my life, the support of my penpals is hard to handle, it is amazing, I always feel like I haven't sent enough back]. All the penpals bring so much in my life, they are being my friends, or second mothers to me. I tear up when I think how many times they cheered me up or make my life less miserable at the day I received postcards form them.

     Lera, mondschein, sends me adorable postcards from my favorites, every time it is the postcard, I wished to receive for a long time. All of these are sort of RAS cards, sent randomly with no swap intent or anything. The left one is pumpkin smoothie recipe - 300 grams of baked pumpkin, 2 bananas, 1 lime, 1 tea spoon of chopped mint, 1/2 of tea spoon of ginger, 1 tea spoon of walnuts, some sugar. Middle one is just a funny postcard from my favorites, and the right one is the game ad, Prime World, the postcard says '...Follow the white rabbit'.

all received from mondschein, Russia (direct swap)

     This one is an illustration by Ukrainian/Crimean artist, Anzhela Dzherikh, - 'Anna Karenina'. There is more postcards by the same author, peculiar plots with naïve manner of drawings - RU-5777579, RU-4339584, RU-3729742, RU-3219831, RU-2704746.

received from mondschein, Russia (direct swap)

     And I am happy to be there for her, when she gets a penpal book from someone, she needs to send abroad. The Xute, or LJ ciuffolotto, to the rescue! This envelope was sent to me along with the friendship book for penpals, from some Aussie postcrosser.

envelope front (left) and back (right) side, from mondschein, Russia (direct swap)

Krasin Icebreaker [part #1]

     Just recently I did a super stupid thing [which happens sometimes to me lately - when I was updating my home PC, also deleted all photos by accident, then spend whole evening crying and trying all the programs to restore it, then realised that I have all photos back up on the external drive xD] - started reorganizing my photos on google both for countries and collections/topics. And deleted the folders of #icebreakers and #space - so now need to re-insert all the pictures of postcards, which links got broken... On the bright side - I will read and remember all the nice stuff again!

     Anyway, this is Krasin, diesel icebreaker which is also a museum in the St. Petersburg [it is interesting, I think, i actually had a swap arranged with someone for more postards with Krasin, but person got caught in the life stuff, and postcards never came to me - but I think I received almost similar ones by other ways, which are shown in this post]. It was one of the museums [official site] we really wanted to visit on St. Petersburg vacation with husband [others were - Aurora cruiser, Kunstkamera, Peterhof, couple of top-restaraunts, and all the nice gardens and parks]. To be honest, I was counting on seeing these postcards in the souvenir shop on board and buy the blank ones, but there were other ones instead.

     The icebreaker itself is a must-see in St. Petersburg. Originally, it was built in Britain, 1917, as Svyatogor - Krassin (1917 icebreaker), was captured by Royal Navy during intervention by Brits to Russian North in 1918-19 [I loooove how people forget that USA and UK basically invaded unstable Russia to capture territories and resources in the beginning of the XX century], was sold to USSR in 1921 [funny, how the Russian Empire's propriety was seized by Brits and they managed to sell it twice], was in rescue mission of Umberto Nobile in 1928, then served as convoy during the WWII, then reconstructed after war by Germans in 50s, and made museum in 90s [unlike other famous diesel icebreaker Yermak]. There is also diesel icebreaker built by Finns by the same name which is still functional, in the Vladivostok operated by Far East Shipping Company, - Krasin (1976 icebreaker).

both received from irra-irra, Russia (direct swap)

     Both postcards, bottom one included, are printed by Gangut publishing [gangut.su], all photos are by M. Emelina. You can see the construction structures on the background, it is because there two different shipyards are located - the Admiralty Shipyard on the left bank and the Baltic Shipyard on the Krasin's side. The first shipyard makes submarines mostly and orders by the Ministry of Defence, second one is the one for battleships and icebreakers. Actually, now [August, 2018] you can see a nuclear icebreaker being build [most likely one of the future LK-60Ya-class] in the Baltic shipyard right from the back deck of 'Krasin', and some diesel icebreaker-look-alike is being built in the Admiralty Shipyard.

received from klemens_ku, Russia (Happy Birthday LJ RR 2017)

     The other thing I bought in the souvenir shop was this wooden fridge magnet [on the left, on the right - 'Lenin' nuclear icebreaker museum from Murmansk, I've not been there, but I buy postcards online from the publishing house located there]. My husband has very strict rules about making the door of the fridge look too messy, but icebreakers have a green light! xD Interesting that the magnet costs like 150 rubles [~2 euro], very cheap, but the souvenir shop lady was very thankful that I am buying something, weird ^^ [maybe it was the famous Petersburgian politeness]

the magnets on my fridge, Krasin icebreaker from the trip to the St. Petersburg and Lenin nuclear icebreaker from the Murmansk postcards webstore