Red Red Rose

Yayyy, my first lottery win!

I won this awesome card in a Valentine's day lottery from Facebook's Postcrossing India group hosted by dear Sridhar

The rose stamp that was affixed to this card was scented!

Totally cool!!

Thank you- Dankie Ngiyabonga Shukriya-Merci ,Muchas gracias! Obrigado! ありがとう Grazie! 감사 Merci! Ευχαριστώ! Danke schön! תודה Takk! Go raibh maith agat! شكرا Dankzij! 感謝 Спасибо! Dziekuję! धन्यवाद Bedankt! Teşekür ederim! Köszönöm! Дякую Mulţumesc! Kiitos SRIDHAR

Latvia map card

This is probably one of my favourite postcard. It shows the shape of Latvia, and inside there are written all the villages/towns of latvia. I like it because you can imagine everything with just a shape of a state. This is what I do when I get a map-.postcard. Giving space to imagination^^

Bled, Slovenia

...from  my country Slovenia definitely one from lake Bled. Why? Simply because it's in my opinion the most beautiful place we have...

 

 

Perito Moreno Glacier - Argentina

Perito Moreno Glacier is a glacier located in the "Los Glaciares National Park" in the south west of Argentinian Santa Cruz province. It is one of the most important tourist attractions in the Argentine Patagonia. The 250 km² (97 sq mi) ice formation, and 30 km (19 mi) in length, is one of 48 glaciers fed by the Southern Patagonian Ice Field located in the Andes system shared with Chile. This icefield is the world's third largest reserve of fresh water.


                       

The ORGAN, South Africa

The Pietermaritzburg City Hall organ is one of the largest pipe organs in the southern hemisphere.

Did you know that it has 3806 pipes ranging in size from 11 metres down to the thickness of a knitting needle?

Ohrid-Saint Panteleimon -Monastery, MACEDONIA

Ohrid is a city on the eastern shore of Lake Ohrid in the Republic of Macedonia. It has about 42,000 inhabitants, making it the seventh largest city in the country. The city is the seat ofOhrid Municipality. Ohrid is notable for having once had 365 churches, one for each day of the year and has been referred to as a "Jerusalem". The city is rich in picturesque houses and monuments, and tourism is predominant. It is located southwest of Skopje, west of Resen and Bitola, close to the border with Albania. In 1979 and in 1980, Ohrid and Lake Ohrid were accepted as a Cultural and Natural World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. In fact, Ohrid is one of only 28 sites that are part of UNESCO's World Heritage that are both Cultural and Natural sites.

 Saint Panteleimon  is a monastery in Ohrid, Republic of Macedonia situated on Plaošnik. It is attributed to Clement of Ohrid, a discipleof Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius. Archaeologists have come to believe that the monastery was the site where the first students of the Glagolitic alphabet (used to translate the Bible into Old Church Slavonic) were taught.

St. Clement's monastery "St. Pantheleimon" is located at Plaosnik (known as Imaret during the Turks), southwards from the Samuel Fortress. This monastery is the oldest Slavic monument of culture. It had an extremely important role in the education of the Macedonians during the period of strong influence of the Byzantine Empire.

St. Clement of Ohrid, its patron and protector, arrived to Devol, Ohrid, and Glavenica persuaded by the Bulgarian Prince Boris.

The archaeological excavations revealed that for his needs St. Clement restored an older church and built onto it another church. There were a number of early Christian buildings on the site. That tells us that the ecclesiastical life was thriving even before the arrival of Clement to Ohrid.

The restored small church was not enough for the needs of St. Clement. Therefore he built a new, larger church in a shape of an uneven rectangle.

The tomb of St. Clement is located on the southern side of the church. The Archbishop of Ohrid, Theopilact in his extensive work "The Life of St. Clement" wrote that it was built by Clement himself. The tomb has been preserved. St. Clement, the miracle worker of Ohrid, was buried there in 916.

According to Theophilact, during Clement's life two churches were used as archiepiscopal cathedrals.

In XV century the Turks converted the church of St. Pantheleimon into a mosque. Later, the Turks allowed the ruined churches and monasteries to be restored. Thus, during the period of the Ohrid Archbishop Prohor in the first half of XVI century, the monastery of St. Clement was restored. However the restored church of St. Clement was ruined again, presumably towards the end of XVI or the beginning of XVII century. The assumption is that the reason for that was the extremely unfavourable situation the Ohrid church was in. On the foundations of the church the Turks erected the mosque "Sultan Mohamed" (Imaret), whose remnants exist even today. Archaeological excavations were carried out in 1943 and 1965.

Apart from the monastery's many reconstructions during the Ottoman empire, it has recently undergone extensive reconstruction and excavation. Reconstruction started on December 8, 2000 and the physical church was fully reconstructed by August 10, 2002. Most of Saint Clement's relics were returned to the church

A partially ruined bell tower was restored on the right side of the monastery and the floors of the interior of the church have been reconstructed with marble. Reconstruction was carried out by hand using materials used to build the original church in order to preserve the original spirituality of the monastery. Machines were only used to polish the interior during the reconstruction of the monastery.The first excavations of the monastery were carried out in 1943 by Prof. Dimche Koco. Excavations inside the monastery have revealed underground tunnels and crypts. Further excavations have been planned to uncover more remains under the monastery, including more ruins of the Roman basilicas that stood there (the pillars outside the monastery support the idea of more remains).

On October 10, 2007, a depot of approximately 2,383 Venetian coins was discovered by archaeologists while excavating the monastery. A prominent archaeologist of the Republic of Macedonian, Pasko Kuzman, stated that the coins are of special significance because they indicate that Ohrid and Venice were commercially linked.

The Gandhi Statue, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

M Gandhi spent 20 years in South Africa during his apprenticeship to become a Mahatma or Great Soul; eleven of which were spent in KwaZulu Natal. In May
1893 on a train trip to Pretoria, Gandhi was ordered by a white man to move from first class to third class. Gandhi, who had a first class ticket,
refused and was thrown off the train in Pietermaritzburg. This became a momentous moment in Gandhi's life as he decided to stay and fight the
oppression of Indians in South Africa. It was during this struggle that he developed his unique resistance movement known as Satyagraha.

Today a bronze statue stands in Church Street, Pietermaritzburg depicting Gandhi forever striding forward. The statue was unveiled in 1993 by
Archbishop Desmond Tutu marking the centenary since Gandhi was thrown from the train.