Fauna of Belarus cards

It's been a while since I've had any time for Postcrossing, or blogging, so blogging about Postcrossing has logically suffered exponentially. But with the Christmas holidays in full swing, and the first holidays in about 10 years where I'm not either working or restoring a home to livable conditions, I've finally managed to send out all 23 possible cards I can send out at the moment (two are technically still waiting to be send, but all the mailboxes have been removed because of possible firework damage, so there's no possibility of mailing them anyway).
Apart from sending cards, I've also been receiving lots of them. One of my favourite categories is turning out to the 'Fauna of Belarus'  series, that features animals living in, you guessed it, Belarus. And luckily for me, most of these cards depict birds.

This is the first I received, an Osprey (Pandion haliaetus):

BY-392166 received 24 March 2012

There followed several others, including a brown bear, a nuthatch, and a bullfinch, but my absolute favourite has to be this one of a little bittern (Ixobrychus minutus):

BY-682628 received 3 December 2012

Because bitterns are simply the coolest birds ever, and by far the bird species I most want to see. If not for real in a reedbed somewhere around here, then a postcard will do nicely.

Sadly, there are no puffins in Belarus, so no puffin postcards, but they do have owls, including this Boreal owl (Aegolius funereus):

BY-779339 received 1 March 2013

Finally, for some reason, the last two cards from this series that I've received have been paintings. They show another Boreal owl and a Pygmy owl. No idea why they switched to paintings, they are kinda nice to look at, but I prefer the real pictures.

If any of you Belarussian Postcrossers are reading this: keep the fauna cards coming! I love them! Also, great to see that you still have so many of these animals that we can only see in zoos, roaming around freely. Makes me wonder whether I should plan my next trip in the direction of Eastern Europe, and that is exactly one of the reasons I'm Postcrossing for!

Sports action live

We Dutch love our ice skating. The best part is when it freezes outside and we get what is called 'natural ice' (as opposed to artificial ice in the skating halls) and everyone drops whatever they're doing and goes ice skating. The absolute high point of the mania is when there might be an Elfstedentocht, which is a 200 km long track touring the 11 (historic) cities of Friesland.
But even without outdoor ice, things can get pretty exciting on indoor ice skating. There are two kinds: long track and short track, and the former is by far the more popular (although short track is catching on quickly). Apart from soccer, speed skating is probably the most popular sport in the Netherlands (which could be exemplified by the fact that Jeremy Wotherspoon didn't qualify for the 500m in Sochi was the second item on the news yesterday). It's one of the few sports we're actually pretty good at on the Olympics, apart from that other thing to do with water - swimming (and dressage, but somehow horse-related things never really catch on here).

Anyway, for the past 5 days, the qualification tournament for Sochi has been taking place, and it's been a fierce battle. The problem, if you can call it that, is that we have too many good skaters. We can only send 3 or 4 people for most distances, and we have about 8 good ones you want to send (some distances are better represented than others, but still most are pretty well covered). The qualifications are taking place in Thialf, which is the Dutch Valhalla of ice skating. And last Friday, I was there to watch the action.
This is probably the time to mention that I am not really a sports fan in the true sense of the word. To stick to skating: I cannot tell you what would be a good or bad time for any given distance. I cannot tell you the name of all the skaters. And when given a name, I could not tell you which team they're skating for, or who their coach (all old skating pros) is.
But I do like to watch. So far, I'd only watched the skating on TV, but now I was going in for the live thing. I'd never seen a real sporting competition up close and in person, and to tell you the truth, I've never really understood why people would go sit/stand in a cold windy stadium where they can only see a very small part of the action (or only very small players) while they could watch the same thing at home from different camera angles with meaningful commentary. Now I know: it's the atmosphere.
The distances we watched were the 500m for the men and the 3000m for the women. The 500m always has to be done twice, so that adds a lot of extra tension: a person having a good first go may falter on the second go around and still not qualify. Also, the skating was very, very good. Michel Mulder rode a track record on the 500m, and several other skaters were very very fast too. And most importantly, the whole stadium becomes one giant, living, breathing organism that can almost literally push a skater that little bit further by their shouting, cheering, clapping, and hammering on the wooden panelling. This sense of togetherness, of seeing a few individuals push themselves to the limit, carried by our cheers and well-wishes, and seeing them perform the things that we could never do, creates such a great atmosphere of beloging and togetherness and possibility, it's impossible not to join in the shouting and jumping and other crazy things. To me, at least.

So now I do understand why people go to sporting matches, even when it can be cold and uncomfortable and crowded and you can't see half the things you could if you were snugly at home. The thing that you don't get at home, the sense of belonging, makes up for all of that. So would I go there again? Definitely, but not too often. There are people who come to Thialf every day, who write down the times and know everybody's personal record by heart: that's not me. To me it is more of a special outing, and special things should be taken sparingly to keep them special. But it has given me new insights, and a great experience I will remember for a while to come.

The Quest

I've finished Hard Times (a bit slow in the middle, but picking up nicely towards the end) and before diving into the next classic, I decided to read a novel I'd gotten for my birthday from a friend who likes to give me novels by people I've never heard of before, which then turn out to be things I absolutely love (The Eyre Affair being a great example). In this case, the novel in question was The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. It's about a guy who suddenly decides to leave his home behind and go on a 'pilgrimage' across England, on foot.
Sounds familiar? Maybe because it reminds you of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, last year's great hit. Somehow, the idea of men suddenly dropping out of their lives to go on a great quest appeals to readers.
Now the theme of 'the quest' is nothing new, of course. Classical and medieval literature is littered with examples, and also many modern day novels include a quest of some sort, be it a physical journey (The Hobbit, to name the most obvious example), a journey of social acceptance (most post-9/11 novels), or a coming-of-age story (most young adult fiction, ranging from The Hunger Games to the diaries of wimpy kids). In short, there has to be some sort of development, some sort of journey (The Hero's Journey is one of the commonest narrative elements) for a novel or story to function.
All this is very well, but the surprising thing in the novels mentioned above, is that this journey is taking place in our world, in our time, by people who could be us. No super-natural events, alternate universes or even parallel worlds (like in Harry Potter), but actual named and described places. Almost as if the event could be taking place right now. And almost as if we, the readers, could be part of that event. That is what got me thinking.

Literature (art in general) functions as an escape from our 'real' lives, I think everybody knows that by now. But somehow, that escape resembles those real lives ever closer. Instead of a hobbit going on an adventure, it's Harold Fry, a simple guy who could just as well be living next door. This can mean two things: either our own imagination is coming up short and we need help by authors guiding us through the 'real' world with 'real' people (I don't think so), or we want to be shown that an adventure is possible in our day and age and life, if only we had the chance. We don't have that chance, because contrary to Allan Karlsson and Harold Fry, we do have jobs and kids and mortgages, and basically no room or time or motivation, but if we were hundred-year-olds or retired and bored, we could just walk out the door in search of adventure. In that sense, it's a consolation: even those guys, who have all but 'left' the world, are still out there doing these great things and travelling these great distances.
Which is kind of sad, really, when you think about it, because it makes me imagine all these people desperate for an adventure or journey or something out of the ordinary, but thinking that they're having to wait until their life is almost over for it to happen. So instead of escaping into literature, I'd advise them to put down the books and go out and have an adventure themselves!
But of course that isn't the main reason for reading these kinds of novels, so if you think your life is quite adventurous enough (as in fact Alan and Harold do, because they never really search out the adventure, it somehow happens to them), do read The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, because it really is a fun book, even if you're happy to just let it happen to someone else.

Christmas decorations

It's the dark days before Christmas, when the weather seems to be foggy and grey every day, and the sun refuses to rise before 9 and leaves before 5 (so much for a 9 to 5 mentality!). When it's cold and dark outside, we have to make it warm and bright inside. Which is exactly where Christmas decorations come in.
(Some people seem to be confused about the 'dark outside - bright inside' thing and put up massive, blinking, colourful light contraptions in their gardens or on their roofs. Although I do appreciate sharing your brightness with the rest of the world, one can go too far in this, very quickly.)
As we used to live in a very small home, with two very energetic cats, we'd never really had the possibility of buy a real Christmas tree. We had a small artificial one that was slowly getting over-loaded with the extra decorations I kept either buying or making every year. But since we now have a real big house to call our own, we could get a real big tree to go with it.
With Christmas trees it's the same as with furniture and electric appliances: they get bigger between the store and your house. We had this same experience this year: it didn't look too big, we even debated maybe putting it on a small table, but when we got home it somehow was taller than I am, and barely squeezed into the space we had allotted it.
Apart from the tree itself, we also bought lots of ornaments, including lights, stars, 'ice pegs' and the normal round ones. All in either shiny or matte silver. Also, we'd received some bird ornaments from Sinterklaas, so these went in as well.
The result, I must say, is one of the most sophisticated 'first trees' I've ever seen. With friends putting up decorations in every colour of the rainbow, or sticking flashy pink ornaments in a white Christmas tree, we're somehow very mature (except for the cute robin ornaments with little red bow-ties, of course). Should I be worried? Are we getting old before our time?
To be honest, I really like this 'classic' Christmas tree. Call me old-fashioned, but I think it looks good, it brightens up the house, without being too flashy or 'out there'. It makes me happy and warm inside, and that is what we're doing these things for.
We've put up some other small, things, like a ribbon to hang our Christmas cards on, and a Christmas star plant, and I'm considering buying a wreath for the door, but that's about it. The rest of the warmth and brightness we'll provide ourselves.

Dickens

So last night, I read my first bit of Dickens. Ever.
Yes, I somehow managed to get through 4 years of English literature without ever picking up a work by Charles Dickens. Slowly let that sink in. Several of my fellow former students of English were baffled and appalled when I told them. But somehow I managed to evade him all that time.
And I actually took a course called 'The long nineteenth century'  which dealt with nineteenth century literature (and a bit before and after: it started with the Romantics and went on a little bit past 1900, hence the 'long' nineteenth century), but there was no Dickens in that. There was some Austen, and Bronte, and Hardy, and Dracula, but no Dickens.
And anyway, I've never really been that interested in Charles Dickens. I watched some Oliver Twist adaptations, of course, and A Christmas Carrol whenever it is around, but to actually read anything? Somehow Dickens struck me as a pompous Englishman feeling rather too good about himself, possibly because most people who persist in telling you that they've read all of Dickens are pompous Englishmen who feel rather too good about themselves.
But as I am in the spirit of 'reading the classics', I decided to give Dickens a chance. I've been pleasantly surprised before, I hoped to be so again. I got A Tale of Two Cities for my birthday, and Oliver Twist and Hard Times for Sinterklaas (all in the beautiful Penguin hardcover cloth bound editions, which make me want to re-buy a lot of books I already have). I decided to start in the latter, as I didn't really know anything about that one, and I felt it was best to start with as clean a sheet as possible (prejudice-free). I read the first three chapters last night, and really, it was not what I expected. Man, that guy is funny. Also, he has these long flowing sentences which run on for about 10 lines but still make sense and don't need you to go back and re-read them again. Which is one of those things I love in Ian McEwan's novels (and many others, Watership Down also has several of those nice long descriptive ones), and I have to keep reminding myself that Dickens wrote them first, even if I am the one who has first read all of McEwan and is now starting on the nineteenth century guy.
Also, you have to feel for those poor people who had to wait for the next chapters to come out every week, as Dickens's novels were first published in magazines. It's like watching a TV-series weekly, instead of just getting a whole season at once, as we're now so used to doing. Actually having to wait for the next instalment of something: how many of us are actually still capable of doing so? Might be a nice experiment to do that with one of his novels, but not this one, as I'm far to curious to know what will happen next!