A great tourist card depicting the Baltic Sea (Ostsee). The Baltic Sea borders Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Sweden. Kiel is located near the Baltic and is a major shipping port and international sailing events. Olympic sailing competitions were held here in 1936 Berlin Olympics and the 1972 Munich Olympics. 

A wonderful Christmas postcard sent to me in December. In her note, the author of the card says that they traditionally eat a meal on Christmas Eve consisting of "goose, red cabbage, dumplings, curly kale, and a lot of sauce." She also enjoys a bottle of red wine with her meal.

Asakusa  浅草 is a district in Tokyo. Asakusa is home to one of three largest Shinto festivals in Tokyo, the Sanja Matsuri  三社祭, or the Three Shrine Festival. It is a weekend long religious celebration that is dedicated to the kami (spirits) of three men - Hinokuma Hamanari and Hinokuma Takenari, two fishermen, and Hajino Nakatomo, a wealthy landlord. All three men devoted their lives to Buddhism after the fishermen caught a statuette of the Bodhisattva Kannon. Nakatomo convinced the fishermen to devote their lives to Buddhism. This apparently happened the morning of 18 Mar 628. 

A nice postcard from an Eric Carle set. Reinbek is  found just outside of Hamburg. It was first mentioned in documents in 1226. It is found along the river Bille which was dammed to form a mill pond.  Eric Carle, of course, is best known for his picture book The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  He passed away in May of 2021. 

The site the Adelaide Oval is located on was established after the formation of the South Australian Cricket Association in 1871. The grandstands have been built and re-built several times to accomodate a modern sports stadium. The oval is used mostly for cricket and Australian Rules Football, but has also been used for rugby league, rugby union, soccer, tennis, and concerts.  The Adelaide Strikers play in the Australian professional Twenty20 league since 2011. They have won the league championship once in the 2017-18 season. The Adelaide Football Club Crows, the Australian Rules Football franchise, have played out of the Adelaide Oval since 2014. They have yet to win an AFL championship since moving to the Oval. Their previous championships came in 1997 and 1998. The women's side has won the championships in 2017, 2019, and 2022.