Books

Picture Postcards: Markets in The Netherlands and China

Happy Monday to you! We have a double offering for you this week as two people have sent in their market photos.

The first photo is from Sandra and was taken at Luilabloemenmarkt in Almere, The Netherlands. It was snapped during Pentacost weekend and she says, “Pentecost occurs seven weeks (50 days) after Easter Sunday and comemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Christ after the Resurrection. It is celebrated on Sunday and Monday, the first and the second day of Pentecost.” She explained that people buy all these lovely flowers to put in their houses and gardens.

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Twelve reasons to love Kyrgyzstan

I have many foreign friends, and one of them wrote this letter to his friends from all over the world, describing why he loves Kyrgyzstan. I read it and understood that there are so many things that I don’t even notice, simply because it’s my country and many things are too obvious to me. So with his permission I am presenting you the following essay.

Why do I love Kyrgyzstan?

By Frieder Shlecht from Germany.

Photo credit

Many people ask: Why Kyrgyzstan? When I arrived, I had only three answers

• The love for the Russian language
• The love for mountains
• The love for Chingiz Aitmatov’s books

Now I could write thousands of pages about why I love this country and in particular its people. Here is an utterly incomplete document with some colorful aspects. I promise I didn’t exaggerate:

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Children's games writing contest – you can be in our book!

Our Children’s games book is taking shape. We made a survey about what you’d like to see in the book, and all your great suggestions will help to make it better and more fun to use. At the moment, PocketCultures contributors from different parts of the world are writing about games played in their countries.

We know that PocketCultures readers live all over the world too, so we decided to hold a competition for you to tell us about favourite games in your country. Write about a game played by children where you live and your entry could be featured in our book!

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Help design our book

At PocketCultures we’re very excited about a project that we’ve been working on together: a book about Children’s games around the world.

As well as having fun writing the book, we hope you’ll have fun reading it too. So we’ve put together a short survey to find out more about what you’d like us to include.

We’d love to hear your feedback on the idea – the survey should take 5-10 minutes to complete. Thanks!

Take the survey here.

Read more:
Kiss, hug or shake hands? Greeting people around the world
What is a global citizen? We asked, you answered
World travel bloggers and Lonely Planet

Our City of Literature: Melbourne

State Library of Victoria by animm on Flickr

Last month, my favourite city Dublin, was appointed the fourth UNESCO City of Literature. Dublin joins Edinburgh, Iowa City and my hometown Melbourne, in UNESCO’s growing creative cities network.

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Bloomsday – it's all about Joyce

Whether you have read it or not, James Joyce’s main work Ulysses had a huge impact on literature. The novel follows two protagonists and their actions around Dublin in Ireland, over the course of June 16, 1904.

And we in Dublin are pretty proud of our own literary genius Joyce (even though he left Ireland at the age of 22 and stayed mostly abroad until his death in 1941) – so if you happen to be in Dublin today, don’t be surprised if you see men and women wearing outfits from the 1910′s, reciting Ulysses on street corners. It’s Bloomsday after all.

Image via, taken by TedRheingold

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