A souvenir card from the Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum. It was founded by Arlene and George Wagner in 1995 and it contains over 9000 nutcrackers as of 2023 According the card, there are 44 countries represented at the museum.  Arlene was the first guest on Conan O'Brien's TBS talk show, Conan , on 8 November 2010. O'Brien had an online survey of potential first guests and Wagner beat out Jack Nicholson, Pope Benedict XVI, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga among a few.  Admission to the museum is $5.00 (USD) for adults, $3.50 for senior citizens, $2.00 for youth, and children and active military personell get in for free.

This is a  hühnerhabicht, or an Eurasian goshawk. They are a medium-large bird of prey. They take birds by engaging in a brief, but agile, twisting hunting flights. They also hunt for small mammals. It is a perch hunter, which means they perch most of the time, and will fly for a minute or two to scan for prey.  Elmshorn is a city found about 30 kilometres north of Hamburg on the small river  Krückau. There are about 50 000 people in Elmshorn. It traditionally has many companies that partake in the food industry, including meat processing and sausage production, margarine production, and cereal processing. 

A great card from San Jose. The sender admits she is not much of a sports person, but does keep up on her favourite National Basketball Association team (Boston Celtics) and her favourite Formula 1 team (Mercedes AMA Petronas).  This is one of those great National Parks cards. Badlands National Park is located in south west South Dakota. It protects almost 1000 square kilometres of land that consists of sharply eroded buttes and pinnacles and undisturbed mixed grass prairie. The National Park Service and the Oglala Lakota Tribe co-managed the park.  The park was established as a national monument on 25 January 1939, and became a national park on 10 November 1978. The American movies, Dances with Wolves  and Thunderheart  were partially filmed here.  The park have many animals including badgers, bighorn sheep, bison, black-billed magpie, black-footed ferrets, black-tailed prairie dogs, bobcats, coyote, elk, mule deer, pronghorn antelope, prairie rattlesnakes, por...

A movie postcard of the movie, San Francisco , starring Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, and Spencer Tracy. The sender is from Shelley, in West Yorkshire, England.  Shelley has a population of almost 3100 people. According to Wikipedia, Shelley has three public houses - The Rising Sun, The Flying Ferret, and the Shelley Sports and Social Club.  San Francisco  is a 1936 American film, and is a musical-drama disaster film. It is based on the 18 April 1906 San Francisco earthquake. It received good reviews and did well at the box office. It was nominated for six Academy Awards for Outstanding Production, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Writing, Best Assistant Director, and Best Sound Recording, but only won for Best Sound Recording by Douglas Shearer. 

A nice card from  Höxter. She was a part of an Easter Postcrossing Meet Up event in April 2023. Looks like about 15 people attended, if I go by the number of rubber stamps on the card. The senders works for the police but doesn't suggest whether she is a police officer, or works on the adminstration side of policing.  Höxter is a small city of about 15 000 people located on the river Weser. It has a medieval town hall and there are several historic buildings with high gables and carved  façades from the 15 and 16 centuries.. Many of these buildings were destroyed in a large explosion in 2005, where three people were killed. Many of the destroyed buildings were re-built.    On the front of the card, Frohe Ostern translates to "Happy Easter."

Felixstowe is a port town in the county of Suffolk on the east coast of England. The Port of Felixstowe is the largest container port in the United Kingdom. You can find Felixstowe about 115 km north east of London.  Felixstowe has ancient origins with the hamlet being centred with a church and pub long before the Norman conquest of England. It remained a relatively low populated place until the late 1800s when tourists began arriving. A permanent pier was constructed in 1905 with an amusement arcade. Permanent beach huts were adopted in Felixstowe around this time, instead of the huts that were wheeled on to the beach that other coast towns had.  The Royal Navy, Air Force, and Army occupied the south-west part of Felixstowe during World War II and built a fort and gun emplacements.  In 1945, German naval commanders from Occupied Holland arrived in E-boats at Felixstowe Dock to surrender their boats and charts to the Royal Navy.  Tourism is still a big part...

A beautiful photograph by Michael Howard. It is a photo taken in the village of Monchique, in the south of Portugal.  Coimbra is a city of 141 000 people and is a cultural centre in Portugal. The first Portuguese university was established in Lisbon in 1290, but relocated to Coimbra in 1308. Tourists visit the area for its monuments and history. The historical buildings here were added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site list in 2013. 

Aachen is home to the Aachen-Dom (Aachen Cathedral). It is one of the oldest in Europe. Charlemagne ordered the cathedral built and ground was broken in 796. It was consecrated in 805. Charlemagne was buried there in 814.  The spire is 72 meters high. Between 936 and 1531, 31 German kings, and 12 queens had their coronations in the Palatine Chapel in the cathedral.  In 1978, it was one of the first 12 items listed on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. 

The previous entry is about the Baltimore Orioles, so let's take a look at the Los Angles Dodgers, who the Orioles defeated in 1966 to win their first World Series.  The Dodgers were established at the Brooklyn Grays in 1883. They joined the American Association from 1884-1889, and then joined the National League in 1890. They have had a number of nicknames over the years: Brooklyn Atlantics, Bridegrooms, Grooms, Superbas, Trolley Dodgers, Robins. From 1932 to 1957 they were the Brooklyn Dodgers.  The Dodgers left Brooklyn in 1958 to play in Los Angeles, where they have been ever since.  The Dodgers have won the World Series seven times - 1955, 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981, 1988, and 2020. They also won the pre-modern World Series in 1900.  The Dodgers broke the colour barrier in Major League Baseball when they played Jackie Robinson. Robinson played in first Major League Baseball game on April 15, 1947. He won the inaugural Rookie of the Year award which would later be na...

A great sports-themed card of the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles are a Major League Baseball team that play in the East Division of the American League. The franchise, which started out as the Milwaukee Brewers in 1894, were one of the eight charter teams of the American League in 1901. The franchise in Milwaukee only last one year. In 1902, the team moved to St. Louis and became the Browns. In 1953, the Browns were purchased by a group of Baltimore business and civic interests and moved to Baltimore to become the Orioles.  The franchise's first World Series appearance was in 1944, but they lost to their stadium sharing rivals from the National League, the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cards would win 4 games to 2. Both teams featured rosters of players who normally wouldn't be playing the Major League level. Many of Major League Baseball's talent were fighting in  World War II.  The first World Series for the Baltimore Orioles came in 1966, where they beat the Los Angeles Dod...

A great vintage map card reproduction of the United States from Stacey, who is a third grade teacher in Lancaster. She uses Postcrossing to teach her class about the world and its different cultures. 

St. Cenydd was said to have built a monastery in the area. There is no proof of this. St. Cenydd was a Christian hermit who lived on the Gower Peninsula in Wales. He has been credited with the foundation of the church at Liangennith. He lived in the 6th century. His feast day in on July 5.  Caerphilly is locate4d about 11 km north of Cardiff. It has a population of about 42 000 people. The town is a part of the world's longest running epidemiology study. Since 1979, a representative sample of adult males born between 1918 and 1938, living in Caerphilly and several of the surrounding villages, have participated in the study. A wide range of health and lifestyle data have been collected throughout the study and have been the basis for over 400 publications in the medical press. A notable report was on the reductions of vascular disease, diabetes, cognitive impairment, and dementia attributable to a healthy lifestyle. 

The neat thing about Montereau-Fault-Yonne is it is split in three by the rivers Yonne and Seine. Paris is located 70 km to the north-west. It has been a busy place in French history. 1359 - the King of Navarre Charles II of Navarre lost the town to the regent of France, future French King Charles V 1419 - John the Fearless, who played a key role in French national affairs in place of his cousin, King Charles VI, who was mentally ill. He was assissinated on the town's bridge on September 1419 by Tanneguy du Chastel 1420 - Philip the Good, son of John the Fearless, seized the town and held it for eight years. King Charles VII retook it after a long seige. 1567 - During the Wars of Religion, Louis de Bourbon, 1st Prince of  Condé, briefly seized the town. 1587 - residents sided with the Catholic League during the Wars of Religion. 1590 - residents accepted the legitimacy of the new French king, Henry IV. 1814 - Montereau was the site of the one of the last victories of Napoleon on 14...

Assen is the capital city of the Province of Drenthe. Drenthe can be traced back to 1258 when a new location had to be found for Marienkamp Abbey. Assen is home to   Asser Christelijke Voetbalvereniging (Assen Christian Football Club), known as ACV. The club was founded in 1939. It currently plas in the Tweede Divisie, which is the highest level of amateur football in the Netherlands. 

Kanadagans (Canada goose) live in the Netherlands, too!  The sender is from Kampen, a city of 55 000 in the north west of the Province of Overijssel. A community has been in the area for a millennia, possibly more. There is evidence of structures there in 1150. The first mention of Kampen in documents was 1277, but Kampen was given city rights since 1236. It's location on the banks of the Zuiderzee and the Rhine made it an important trading port.  Today the remains of the walled fortress that surrounded the city still exists. There are two theological universities in Kampen - one for the Protestant Church and one for the Reformed Church. 

The sender says she is "un-sporty" but loves to swim and to hike. She just got back from hiking in the Black Forest.  The Black Forest has a large variety of hiking trail that cater to beginners and experts; short hikes and days long hikes. The Schwarzwaldverein (Black Forest Club) laid out many of the trails in the 20th century. The best known is the Westweg (West Way) and it is a challenging hike with many steep inclines. Circular hikes were added in the 1950s.  The  Barfußpark Dornstetten (Barefoot Park) is a 2.4 km hiking trail where hikers are encouraged to go barefoot for its medicinal value.