A great card from Hong Kong of painting of a busy city street in Hong Kong. 

Munderkingen is a town of 5500 located on the Danube. Located here is the New Danube Bridge. It was built in 1893 and was the first massive concrete arch bridge. It has an arch span of 50m. Part of it was blown up by the retreating German Army in 1945, but was quickly rebuilt by 1948. 

I like these famous women scientist cards you can buy. This one comes from Forest Grove, Oregon, and suburb of Portland.  Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923) was an English electrical engineer, mathematician, physicist, inventor, and a suffragette. She attended Girton College, Cambridge, and studied mathematics and was coached by physicist Richard Glazebrook. She passed the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge, but they did not grant her an academic degree because they did not award full degrees to women. Instead she passed an external examination at the University of London, which did award her a Bachelor of Science Degree in 1881.  In 1844 she attended evening classes on electricity at Finsbury Technical College. She ended up marrying the instructor, Professor William Edward Ayrton, in 1885. He was a pioneer in electrical engineering and physics education and a fellow of the Royal Society. She assisted him with experiments in physics and electricity, and soon began her own investigations ...

The sender describes Buxtehude as a "small, fairytale town near Hamburg in Germany," and goes on to say that "It's told that a hare and a hedgehog ran for a bet and the smarter hedgehog won. Now both are symbols of the town." The Brothers Grimm wrote the The Hare and the Hedgehog.  Because Bextehude is mentioned in so many Germany fairy tales, many don't believe the town actually exists. In fact there is a saying - nach Buxtehude jagen  which translates "to chase somebody of to Buxtehude" which means to exile someone to a far away place.  There are early signs of settlement here from the Bronze Age, but the settlement by the Este River is first mentioned in 959.  Tourism is a big part of Buxtehude's economy and it enjoys a reputation of being warm and visitor friendly. It preserves its cultural and regional heritage without denying the future.  There are 41 000 residents of Buxtehude. 

Bayan Lepas is a suburb of George Town. The Penang Bridge connect George Town with Bayan Lepas. The Penang Bridge is the site of a marathon that is mostly raced on the bridge.  The Penang Bridge International Marathon also includes a half-marathon and a 10 km event. The latest winners were Moses Mbugua of Kenya and Rita Jeptoo of Kenya. In fact, all the men's winners of the marathon have been from Kenya. On the women's side, Kenyan runner have also won except for 2006 and 2007 (Devamani Sothie of Malaysia) and 2012 (Monika Fischer of Germany).

A beautiful card about the nations of the world getting along - if only. Plauen is located in eastern Germany, near the Czech border. There are about 65 000 people here which makes it roughly the same size as Medicine Hat.  An interesting fact about Plauen was a part of East Germany. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Plauen became the first East German city to open a McDonald's Restaurant. 

Reichenbach im Vogtland is located in eastern Germany, near the Czech border. One of the sites on the front of the card show the  Göltzschtalbrücke ( Göltzsch Viaduct). It was built between 1846 and 1851 as part of the railway between Saxony and Bavaria. It is the world's largest brick bridge, and for a time the tallest railway bridge in the world. It spans the valley of the  Göltzsch River. It is 574 m long, 23 m wide at the base, 9 m wide at the top, and 78 m tall at its highest point. There are over 26 million bricks in the bridge.  Between 1955 and 1958, the masonry was completely restored, and it wasn't until 1977 when placement of steel cover plates and other smaller jobs were completed.  It is infamous as a suicide bridge for 150 years. In August 2001 three teenagers jumped. A documentary film  Ein Tag mit Folgen: Teuflische Spiele  (A Day with Consequences: Diabolical Games),  was created about the event and how it changed the lives of the fami...

This card is coming from a Canadian ex-pat living and working in Dallas as a registered nurse. So many Canadians work in Dallas as health care workers.  This card is a souvenir of the State Fair of Texas. It takes place at Fair Park in Dallas and started in 1886. The two World Wars and COVID-19 cancelled fairs in 1918, 1942, 1943, 1944, and 2020. It begins the last Friday of September (a week from today as I write this) and ends 24 days later. It averages about two million visitors.  A big part of the fair is the annual college football game between Oklahoma and Texas, known as the Red River Rivalry. It is played at the Cotton Bowl located on state fair grounds. There is also the State Fair Classic between Grambling State University and Prairie View A&M University.  The fair has had its fair (no pun intended) share of controversy. The fair is located in a depressed neighbourhood and the fair actually creates real estate values to go down. Neighbourhood businesses also...

In Kuala Lumpur you will find the second tallest skyscraper in the world - Merdeka 118. It is 118 floors and 678.9 m tall. It was completed in November 2023 and had its grand opening in January 2024, despite remaining closed. As of July 1 2025, it is still undergoing construction.  Merdeka means independence in Malay.  The building itself will be a mix of office space, hotels, residential flats, and retail outlets, with an observatory floor. It also has two observation decks, one inside the building and the second inside the spire. Four acres will surround the building of urban and linear parks. Sixty of the 80 floors reserved for office space will be for use by Permodalan Nasional Berhad, the developer of the project. 

 

 

This card comes from the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum (German Mining Museum) in Bochum Germany. This is a bicycle miners either used in the mines, or for getting to and from the mine. 

Continuing with the Texas theme, we arrive in Dallas. In 1839, John Neely Bryan surveyed the area around what is now Dallas. He marked the spot by planting a stake on a bluff near the three forks of the Trinity River but did not return until 1841. That year, he established a permanent settlement and named it Dallas. The city’s name is most commonly attributed to George M. Dallas, the 11th vice president of the United States. However, some accounts suggest it was named after his brother, Commodore Alexander James Dallas of the U.S. Navy, a veteran of the War of 1812, the Second Barbary War, and the Second Seminole War. Another theory holds that the name came from the village of Dallas in Scotland.

A nice card from San Antonio from a fellow educator!

A beautiful card that looks like it could have been taken in and around Medicine Hat. The sender comes from Sulzbach, a town of 16 000 people located in south west Germany, and located 10 km from  Saarbrücken, the capital city of Saarland. 

The card translates as follows: Journey Towards the Future and Ruhr-Sieg route and change in transportation.  Wenden is a small city of about 20 000. It is first found in documentation in 1011. A monastery was founded here. Catholicism is still the main religion here as it remained Catholic during the Reformation. Neighbours to the southeast, south, and southwest converted to Protestantism. Today St. Severinus parish church can be found here. 

A beautiful card entitled Birds and Flowers of Twelve Months (August)  by Sakai  Hōitsu  酒井 抱一  (1761-1828).  Hōitsu began his studies in art in the    Kanō school - one of the most schools of Japanese art. He later studies with Watanabe Nangaku of the Maruyama School and Sō Shiseki of the nanga style before finally becoming a painter of the Rinpa School.    In 1797,  Hōitsu became a Buddhist priest. He cited poor health for his decision. He spent the last 21 years of his life in seclusion. He also spent this time studying the work of Ogata  Kōrin and Ogata Kenzan, and created a number of reproductions of their works. He also produced two books of woodblock prints of the Ogata brothers works. 

It's always a treat when I receive a card from a country I don't see very often. This card from Budapest is only the 10th one out of almost 4300 cards received from Hungary. It was bought by the sender when he was vacationing in Madrid, Spain. 

This card comes from a Russian ex-pat living in Dresden for the last decade. Its a great photograph taken by Zikmund Reach. It is entitled The Chestnut-seller  and is a part of a series called Prague Characters .