Postcard SK-52960 from Slovakia shows Solivar near Prešov, "Saltworks," a branch of the Slovak Technical Museum. Opened in 2001, it focuses on history and technology for boiling and producing of salt.
The card is listed for sale on the museum's site for 0.50 EUR. The building on the right, where salt was cooked, now serves as the main building of the museum. The building on the left, an old repository, was affected by a fire and it is being restored. Dušan Balara has published an aerial video on YouTube showing the restoration in progress.
The Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Gardens is partnering with Coca-Cola on Toys for Tots holiday gift drive. For each photo shared on social media with the #BellagioHoliday and #MakeSomeoneHappy hashtags, Coca-cola will donate one dollar to the charity campaign until the total amount reaches $50,000.
#BellagioHoliday, the mother polar bear and the three cubs are made of 37,000 carnations, #MakeSomeoneHappy
Postcard US-2615455 to Indiana was a polar bear shaped card bought at the Everything Coca-Cola Store on Las Vegas Boulevard.
Postcard DE-3712774 from Germany shows a rainbow and the Lighthouse Westerheversand, located in Westerhever on the northwestern tip of the Eiderstedt Peninsula in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Surrounded by salt marshes, it is a major attraction on the peninsula for its 80,000 annual visitors.
The 9-story lighthouse was built on a mound in 1906, with a focal height of 41 meters and a range of 21 nautical miles or 39 kilometers. It can be seen as far as 55 kilometers away in a clear day. The lighthouse was featured on a 55-cent German commemorative stamp in 2005.
Postcard US-3038790 to Germany was one of those postcards I bought at the tropical themed casino Margaritaville in Las Vegas, showing a trio of parrots relaxing on the beach by a "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problem" sign post. Since a parrot can really sing "I'm Sexy and I Know it" as seen on this Youtube video, the above beach scene may not be a total fantasy.
On a technical note, unlike the previous Youtube videos embedded in this blog with the built-in tools from Blogger.com that require Adobe Flash player or browser plug-ins, this video was embedded using the HTML 5 codes provided on the Youtube page under the Share/Embed/Email tabs. I will start to use the HTML 5 codes from now on, so that the embedded videos can be viewed on a mobile devices that do not support Adobe Flash.
Outgoing postcard US-2869244 to Ukraine, sent on July 3, 2014, has since expired. It shows a tagged northern spotted owl in a redwood forest in California.
After I saw a Youtube video of an owl attacked by a hawk, I was curious about the difference between owls and hawks, all birds of prey. Owls belong to the order Strigiformes, with more than 100 species. On the other hands, hawks belong to the Accipitridae family within the order Accipitriformes. Owls are more active at night while hawks rule the day. That probably partially explain the timing of the above "attack." However, hawks do appear to be more aggressive and territorial. Another popular Youtube Video shows the dramatic moment of a hawk attacking a drone over Cambridge, Massachusetts recently, sending the quadcopter plummeting to the ground.
Photo Credit: Michael Nichols/National Geographic Stock. The postcard was purchased at National Geographic store at Zazzle.
Postcard US-2205897 to the Netherlands was one of the several shaped cards that I bought at the "Everything Coca-Cola" specialty store in Las Vegas. Today I came cross a 2014 Coca-Cola "The Sounds of AHH" commercial by Kurt Schneider, Max Schneider, Zendaya, and Kina Grannis, singing the cover of Capital Cities' "Safe and Sound" and using the coke bottles and glasses as instruments.
I could lift you up
I could show you what you wanna see
And take you where you wanna be
You could be my luck
Even if the sky is falling down
I know that we'll be safe and sound
Postcard SI-98149 from Slovenia shows the Dolina Triglavskih jezer (Triglav Lakes Valley) in the Julian Alps in Slovenia. It is a rocky hanging valley above the tree line between the sheer sides of Mount Tičarica and Mount Zelnarica southwest of Triglav, the highest mountain in Slovenia and the highest peak of the Julian Alps at 2,864 meters or 9,396 feet.
The valley is also called the Seven Lakes Valley, although there are actually ten lakes in the valley. The lowest lake Črno jezero (Black Lake) is at 1,294 meters or 4,245 ft above sea level; the highest Jezero v Podstenju (Podstenje Lake) has an elevation of 1,993 meters or 6,539 feet. Each lake has a color varying from green, blue, brown to black.
I found this time-lapse video of a two-day hiking tour at the Triglav Lakes Valley on Youtube. The climbers made stops at Black Lake, at the beginning of their journey; at Big Lake next day, the largest and deepest lake also called Kidney Lake with an elevation of 1,831 meters or 6,007 feet; and near Green Lake at 1,988 meters or 6,500 feet, named after the algae living in the lake.
Postcard US-2242693 to Seattle shows a fruit sculpture presentation made out of a melon during the Chinese New Year Celebration at the Fremont Street Experience in downtown Las Vegas. The art of fruit carving can be traced to Japan, Thailand and China in ancient times.
If you would like to learn how to carve vegetables and fruits, I found a Youtube video from Mutita offering very simple and easy step by step lessons for making a cantaloupe flower.
As part of the Veterans Day Celebrations, Aviation Nation, the annual open house and air show at Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas, was scheduled for November 9 and 10, 2013. However, due to government spending cuts, the U.S. Air Force has cut back non-critical activities. As a result, all air shows including Aviation Nation, have been cancelled.
Postcard US-2317852 to Malaysia shows a F-22 Raptor flying near an early moon in the late afternoon during the 2010 Aviation Nation on November 13, 2010. F-22 Raptor is a single-seat, twin-engine stealth fighter jet manufactured by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, partnering with Boeing Defense, Space & Security.
Youtube has a video on the F-22 Demo at the 2010 Aviation Nation, performed on Sunday, November 14, 2010.
Postcard NL-2104782 from the Netherlands shows restoration of the Zwolle Station with bus and train services, circa. 1954. Zwolle is the capital of the province of Overijssel, the Netherlands. More recently, the station underwent a major renovation in 2000, which resulted in an increased capacity among the effort to overhaul the entire public transportation systems in the city to serve the bus and train passengers better.
Zwolle was built on a hill overlooking four rivers: the IJssel, Vecht, Aa and Zwarte Water. It has a long history dated back to the Bronze Age period while the city as it is now known was founded around 800 A.D. The compact old city was surrounded by a star-shaped moat traversed by the Zwarte Water which means black water.
Map of Zwolle by Joan Blaeu in Blaeu's "Toonneel der Steden", 1652, from Wikipedia
Zwolle residents were known as Blauwvingers
(Bluefingers) from a folk story dated back to 1682 when the St.Michael's church
tower collapsed. The city government was short on cash and had to sell the church bells to neighbouring city Kampen.
However, Kampen residents found out the bells were
too damaged to be played, after agreeing a high price. In revenge, Kampen residents paid in copper coins of
four duiten (the equivalent of 2.5 cents). Distrusting Zwolle people went through a rigorous counting to make sure that they got paid in full. As a result, their fingers had turned blue from the copper after counting this vast amount of coins.
The following video on YouTube shows that Zwolle is really a charming city.
Postcard US-2359324 is traveling to Texas, USA, showing the Gastown steam clock, powered by steam from underground pipes that supply steam to heat many downtown buildings. The clock sounds its whistles every quarter-hour. It was built by horologist Raymond Saunders in 1977 based on an 1875 design.
I uploaded the following video of the steam clock in action to YouTube seven years ago on June 26, 2006. I have forgotten the login credential to that account since. However, to my surprise, it has accumulated 23259 viewers so far.
One year ago, South Korean K-pop musician Psy released his 18th single "Gangnam Style" (강남스타일) on July 15, 2012 and debuted at number one on South Korea's Gaon Chart. It gained popularity as it became the first Youtube video to surpass a billion viewings on December 21, 2012 and many different individuals and groups made cover videos or parodies and dance mobs attracted thousands of participants around the world. By July 15, 2013, "Gangnam Style" has been viewed over 1,742,800,200 times on YouTube.
The traveling postcard US-2246671 to China shows Santa Claus was dancing to the "Gangnam Style" at the Fashion Show Mall in Las Vegas on December 1, 2012.
It seldom rains in Las Vegas. Measured at the Las Vegas McCarran International Airport between 1981 and 2010, the average annual precipitation is about 4.19 inch or 106.4 mm. In average, there are 26.5 raining days per year; even during the wettest month in February, it has only 4 days of precipitation. It is the driest month in June when the average monthly precipitation is 0.07 inch or 1.78 mm with 0.6 raining days. (Interestingly, in English, plural "days" is used with zero or a decimal version of less than one instead of singular "day"). I used to live in West Palm Beach, Florida. In comparison, the average annual precipitation during the same period there is 62.31 inch or 1,582.67 mm with 136 raining days per year.
As a result, we rarely see rainbows in Las Vegas. Therefore, when it does occur, it's beautiful and magnificent. The postcard US-2276095 is currently traveling to Moldova featuring a rainbow over the Mirage Hotel and Casino.
On Youtube, you can watch "Over the Rainbow" from the 1939 movie "the Wizard of Oz", sung by actress Judy Garland.
Here are a few more postcards with rainbows over Las Vegas: US-2236311 with New York-New York Hotel and Casino to Ukraine and US-2205397 with Wynn Las Vegas to California, USA.
Thirty five years ago, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) opens its priesthood to "all worthy men" on June 9, 1978, ending a 148-year-old policy of excluding black men. A line in the lyrics of "the Book of Mormon" alluded above event: "I believe that in 1978 God changed his mind about black people..."
I realized that I still had a couple of the advertising cards of the movie "Latter Days" from its screening at the Gateway Theatre in Fort Lauderdale on February 20, 2004. According to IMDB, the movie is about a promiscuous gay party animal who falls for a young Mormon missionary, leading to crisis, cliché, and catastrophe. You can watch Latter Days' official trailer on Youtube.
I bought a copy of the Latter Days movie when it was out in DVDs. I feel It still resonate with anyone who has ever fallen in love when I watched it again after all these years. Now you can own a copy in Blu-ray from Amazon.
The recipient would like her PostCrossing senders to pick one of the five YouTube videos listed on her profile and write down what the senders think after listening on their postcards. The video I picked was "Somewhere Around Nothing" by Apocalyptica. The music gave me the sense of urgency to fulfill one's purpose of life. I was amazed that a cello can sounded so metal. If a cello can be transformed into a person, it certainly shows an other wise mellow guy can be powerful when determined.
