Thursday, March 26, 2009

Uzbekistan - Samarkand

I was extremely happy to find 3 cards from Uzbekistan in my mailbox yesterday! :) Valeriy from Tashkent was very kind to answer my swaprequest and to send me 3 cards separately (written and stamped), even though I didn't ask him to do so :) Valeriy, I don't know if you read my blog, but if you do - I just want to tell you I'm very thankful for the wonderful cards you sent me! :) Спасибо большое!

I thought they would take a longer time to arrive here, but in fact they got here in just 10 days. Another nice surprise was that one of the Uzbek postcards has enriched my UNESCO collection :) Samarkand - Crossroads of Culture has been a World Heritage Site since 2001. By the way, I thought I live in an old city (1009 years old), but compared to Samarkand (2750 years old) the history of Wrocław and Poland in general seems to be so short...

One of my postcards related dreams is to receive at least one postcard from each of ex-USSR countries. There are 15 of them (or 17, if you count also Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but in my opinion they're not independent countries, at least not yet, so my goal is to receive cards from 15 countries) and I've already received cards from 8 of them (Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan), which is more than half :) But receiving cards from the missing 7 countries (Moldova, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan) will be much more difficult and I think it may take several years :) But don't you think it's good to have some goals that are hard to achieve? :)


Samarkand (Uzbek: Samarqand, Самарқанд, Persian: سمرقند, UniPers: "Samarqand"), is the second-largest city in Uzbekistan and the capital of Samarqand Province.The city is most noted for its central position on the Silk Road between China and the West, and for being an Islamic centre for scholarly study. The Bibi-Khanym Mosque remains one of the city's most famous landmarks. The Registan was the ancient centre of the city. In 2001, UNESCO inscribed the 2750-year-old city on the World Heritage List as Samarkand - Crossroads of Cultures.

Samarkand derives its name from the Old Persian asmara, Tajik Самарқанд, "stone", "rock", and Sogdian kand, "fort", "town".


Samarkand is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world
, prospering from its location on the trade route between China and the Mediterranean (Silk Road). At times Samarkand has been one of the greatest cities of Central Asia. Founded circa 700 BC by the Persians it was already the capital of the Sogdian satrapy under the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia when Alexander the Great conquered it in 329 BC Samarkand has been one of the main centres of Persian civilization from its early days.

3 comments:

Ana said...

aah, so this is the new country!! It's a real gem i must say! :)
as with the ones you are missing...i think that the hardest might be Tajikistan, Kyrgizstan and Turkmenistan...unless God sends some great person there, like Jo in Kazakhstan, so kind and generous to send postcards to everyone :)
I was wondering, do you go strictly for cards sent from those places, or they can be sent from somewhere else as well? Coz that might ease the conquest...
I would also like to have a card from each country in the world, but im not really in a rush...i feel that if i accomplish that way to soon, i will be left without a bigger goal afterwards and just may lose interest...right now im just enjoying all those great cards out there...

Оксана said...

Thanks :)

Well, I would love to have cards sent exactly from those places, but I'd be happy to receive them even from Poland :) I'm not a very serious postcard collector, so I'm trying not to create any "rules" concerning the way my postcards should be sent. I may have some preferences, but still, it's the effort which matters :)

I don't think it's possible to collect cards from all the countries and territories... Well, maybe I shouldn't say it's impossible, because I know one person from Malaysia, who already has cards from nearly all countries, sent exactly rom those places. But I can't imagine, how to do it :) And there'll always be some new independent countries, so even if you achieve this goal - you may have to "complete" it again soon :)

- said...

Nice goal! But I think it would be hard to achieve but when you finally reached it, you will be very lucky I guess :)