This card shares an interesting summer tradition:
Hello Sandra!
I’m Rostislav. I am 12 years old and I’m from Minsk, Belarus.
On the holiday of the Slavic traditions of Ivan Kupala on the night of 6 to 7 July, girls floated wreaths on the river. If the girl floated a single wreath and it quickly floated down the river, this meant an early marriage.
Distance travelled: 10,700 miles (17,220 kms)
Greeting from Taiwan!
I’m Yu-Han. Traditional Taiwanese wedding customs include marriage preparation such as sending betrothal gifts to the bride, selecting an auspicious wedding date, compiling a guest list and picking up cookies and invitations.
On the day of the wedding, the bridegroom drives to the bride’s parents and offers tea to parents and receives their red envelopes. Before leaving bride’s home, bride’s mother will pour out a basin of water and bride will toss a fan. Those mean the bride is no longer a member of her original family.
Coming to the bridegroom’s house, the bridesmaid will hold a circular rice filter above the bride’s head and the bride will step on the tile and crush it, which means eradication of past evils.
Yu-Han
Distance travelled: 5,679 miles (9,139 kms)
Dear Sandra,
My name is Marina and I am from Moscow, Russia. I’ll tell you about my unusual and unforgettable date. It was four years ago, when I was a first course student. My friends and I went for the first time to Sain Petersburg. One evening my groupmate offered me to go to the cinema. We left our other friends and went there. (It was about 8 pm) But on our way we disputed and swore.
I decided to turn and go to the hotel. The city was really unfamiliar to me and it took me a lot of time to find my way. And after 1 hour of wandering, I ran into my guy who also was lost. We considered this situation to be good fortune and since then have never left each other.
Happy postcrossing!
Love,
Marina
Distance Travelled: 8,320 miles (13,390 kms)
Hello Sandra!
Unfortunately, I’ve never been on a date so I can’t share my experience. But if I could imagine ‘the perfect date’ then it would go like this: watching favorite movies, eating some junk food and laughing a lot. Don’t think that I would experience something like that ever in my life.
Also, hope you’ll like the postcard 🙂 Have a wonderful time!
Masha
Distance travelled: 10,282 miles (16547 kilometers)
Hello Sandra!
I’m a 21 year old student from Kazan, Russia.
Well, as you might know, Russia is a traditional patriarchal country, which personally I like. Here a guy/man is supposed to ask a girl/woman out for the first date and he is supposed to pay for her on the first date.
Many boyfriends tend to behave jealously. I don’t like it, but many girls/women put up with it, though it depends, of course. Not everyone is jealous/compliant that much.
Distance travelled: 9,836 miles (15,829 kilometers)
Dear Sandra,
Hi and greetings from Hong Kong! I have never come across someone who asks about marriage and dating customs. HK has both Chinese traditional values and Western beliefs, so if you ask marriage here, it’d be kind of in-between.
People are serious about relationships but also can tolerate divorce and other acts more commonly seen in the west. People also get married rather late here, usually after 30.
-Frances
Distance travelled: 5,862 miles (9,433 kilometers)
Here’s a little story from Toronto, Canada.
“I’m happy to tell you how I met my wife. It was in Vancouver, where I was getting my master’s degree at the University of British Colombia. I was riding a bus to campus and a woman got on a few stops after I did. She sat down behind me and started reading a book in German. I speak German, so I started talking to her. We hit it off, and the rest is history. That was in 2003. We’re now married and living in Toronto.”
Distance traveled: 2,179 miles
Here’s a cute story from Poland:
Hello Sandra!
My name is Agnieszka. I live in Poland. My first very important date was ages ago – in February ’85. In Poland there was a winter with a lot of frost (2° F) and snow then. We met in the ruins of the old castle and we kissed, ignoring the frost.
3.5 years later we got married in the monastery shown on this postcard. When we left the church, people were throwing coins for good luck. You have to collect them all, but I didn’t even notice them.
So maybe I’m not very rich, but I’m still happy with the same man 🙂
Total distance traveled: 11,042 miles (17,770 kms)
Continuing on with our series of postcards, here are a few more for the week.
Given the topic of this blog, it might come as a surprise that I don’t usually enjoy things that are overly sentimental or romantic, but even I thought this card from Germany was adorable:
This postcard from Estonia is of the logo used in 2011, when Tallinn was the European capital of culture. I tried to find out why they chose this particular logo, but haven’t discovered anything yet.
This card from the UK shared a short story:
“My best date was the second date with my husband. We went to an REM concert at Old Trafford Cricket Ground. Amazing night, amazing guy…. I married him! x”
Here’s another from Australia:
Hello Sandra,
I am very much for marriage :). As the years have passed, I have watched many people do their family trees and put family reunions together and I think in another 20-40 years there are going to be many disappointed people because they can’t track parents and grandparents, let alone further back.
I was a lucky one, found my life partner and never looked back :), 30 years this year.
Problems are easy to work out if you both have respect for each other and a determination to remember why you got married in the first place. I can only hope the same for our kids 🙂
Happy Postcrossing,
Gaye
Distance travelled: 1,537 miles (2,473 kms)
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