More than 14 months...has passed...I'll start with this brilliant illustration that I have received via lottery group, thanks to Kati :) 

Melbourne Tram, Australia - Wooden Postcard

Gosh, has it been two and a half months already...I've been doing some scanning, and so I shall have enough material to post when I go to isolation, once AGAIN. Despite a much slower pace at exchanging postcards lately, I have managed to collect 60+ different countries throughout last year, though somewhat strangely Australia was not one of them...My only exchanges this year are actually not exchanges, but I have discovered a lottery group on FB, so you kind of 'bid' for a card you like, and if you are lucky enough to win it, you offer your own, and so it goes. It will probably keep me going for a bit, and then I'll move to something else lol my restless self.

Anyways! This was sent many years back, a proper thick wooden card :)) 

And A Very Happy New Year!

Auld Lang Syne - is a Scots-language poem written by Robert Burns in 1788, but based on an older Scottish folk song. It is traditionally sung to bid farewell to the old year, and translates into standard English as 'old long since' i.e. long, long ago.

So here's for the sake of old times, but may the new times be (even) better!

Merry Ginger Xmas!

I had to dig deep into my scan archives to find a postcard relating to Christmas holidays! And voila - here is a joyous (and dancing?) Gingerbread Man, all the way from Nova Scotia. A curious fact (for me at least!) is that the Gingerbread Man cookies pre-date the Gingerbread Man fairy tale, and that by centuries..! The cookies could even have been found at the court of Elizabeth I of England. I don't know why I always assumed it was vice versa...Baking GB men (ha!) was never a tradition in my region, ours was much more modest in a way. The special cancellation is awesome, and who else to thank for it but dear Byron :) Another lesson today, that there is a Christmas Island in Canada, just east of Nova Scotia peninsula. Merry Xmas everyone!

Wine Country, Bavaria

This could have been aptly posted more than a month ago, when new wine was being tested and tried..! Still, being one of my favourite liquids of life, wine is pretty much always a subject to talk about, no? :)

As the sender wrote: in any town in Lower Franconia you can find a wine store, purchase a glass of local wine and enjoy sipping on it while overlooking the river Main. Now doesn't that just sound marvellous? Vielen Dank Svenja :)

Kitty Flower Power

I am not myself the greatest hippy fan, but I do like the series with kitty illustrations by Verkerke, one of which is this - the main reason, because they were one of the first non-view postcards I've ever bought! That was some 25 years ago, when I was studying in Zadar, and there was a great newsstand with such a vast choice of all sorts of postcards, a place I remember fondly, but also with a certain melancholy, as any true postcrosser I am sure can understand...in my country at least. I've decided to give this one a new life by posting it to my sister's address in Germany, with a special postmark...which reminds me...should check if there's anything interesting in that field these days. I find most of the special postmarks by our Post rather dull, I have to admit.

And yes, I have received some mail, after a month's hiatus, due to one of the mailmen quitting while the other one was on annual leave...! I think it was the last of it, as I haven't done any swaps in the last few months. I think I'll have plenty of time this winter writing posts on this year's mail...it's time, even if noone reads it lol

Lou Paper Coffee Postcard

Tagged for in the Especially Special Tag, I was happy that my first received Lou Paper postcard is coffee-themed; and what made it even more special, the donkey and lizard stamps..! I wouldn't want to start collecting these as there are simply too many of them out there, but as I've said I like having one example of every postcard series. As I progress ever so slowly, there are probably three new series to my every received example card lol. I haven't found anything in my mailbox for weeks...that said, I've read somewhere that our postmen tend to have annual leave about this time, and there's noone to replace them...prices going up, but still a lack of work force because paying decent wages seems to be the scariest thing for the mighty capitalists. Oh well. This is a great postcard, so let's focus on that - thank you so much Adrienne :))

Hygge

Hygge is a word describing the Danish way of life, or rather a concept of escaping the daily rush to relax and enjoy life's quieter pleasures. Various definitions of the word exist, and can be traced even to the Middle Ages, where a similar Old Norse word meant 'protected from the outside world'. The term hygge was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017.

I particularly like the image at the bottom left :) The stamps, which I have found at the local 7/11-type-of corner shop, seem to depict familiar sayings; the 2nd and the 3rd one I think are international - when the cats are away, the mice play :) - burnt children shun the fire. The first one seems to say: every bird sings with it's beak? It should mean that different people express themselves in different ways i.e. to the best of their abilities. It's interesting, and I am now trying to think of a Croatian saying with a similar meaning...