Many thank to Claudia (Chrissybaby) of Ireland for helping me with my UNESCO WHS collection. Newgrange is part of "Archaeological Ensemble of the Bend of the Boyne". It has been a UNESCO site since 1993. On the back of the card, it says, "Along the north bank of the River Boyneis the remarkable pre-Christian cemetery Bru na Boinne, legendary burial place ofthe kings. It's a series of neolithic tumuli which the three principal mounds are at Knowth, Newgrange and Dowth about 2 kms from one another. The Newgrange Tumulus has a passageway leading to a central chamber with side recesses for burials. During the winter solstice, the rays of the sun reach the central chamber."Having typed this above, Iwant to mention about a new discussion going on the forums. It was started by johnson21c for cities with 2 or more UNESCO sites (London, Brussels, Berlin to name a few). Then, another dedicated UNESCO collector, SLLiew raised an important point saying that some UNESCO sites show a particular place, like "Great Mosque and Hospital of Divrigi" while some cover many places, like "Temple and shrines of Kyoto". Of course, it depends on the user's choice to decide how many cards would be OK to cover a place.
As for me, my primary aim is to get at least one postcard of each UNESCO site. I have only 165 UNESCO postcards as of today so I have a long way to go. On the other hand, it is quite difficult to find postcards of many UNESCO sites due to lack of postcrossers or unavailability of postcards. I am not sure about how to sort out my collection and I need time to make things proper. In my google spreadsheet I mark a site off when I receive a card from this place BUT today I realized it just doesn't make sense. Take the card above as an example: "The Archaeological Ensemble of the Bend of the Boyne" would only be complete if I receive cards of Knowth and Dowth. I have to work harder in soting my cards. God, give me more free time :)
Ive been having the same problem with the UNESCO entries which cover several places, and I dont know how to deal with them when ticking them off the list...like for example the Belfries of Belgium and France which in total cover around 30 different places! So in order to be able to take that site off my list I need to actually have a card from each of these 30 some places...and that is just one example out of many, making the whole aim-list so much longer =/ And it is driving me crazy since it makes me feel like I will never actually accomplish it....
ReplyDeleteWow, that is a really good point about "completing" your UNESCO collection. Plus for some of these sites there is limited information in English. For example when I took a trip to Gyeongju, South Korea, I got a bunch of postcards, but how do I know which ones "count" for Gyeongju historic areas? The description on the UNESCO webpage isn't that detailed, and the cards have hardly any English... sometimes the "English" is just a Korean name in latin letters, like "Kwaenung"... (there isn't a very good selection of postcards, either).
ReplyDeletewikipedia is a good place to find more detailed information and the official site. When i travel, i will try to print out some basic information before hand and bring along. When i am not sure about the postcard location, i will just ask the casher or sales assistant. Being inscribed as unesco whs is quite a bit thing, especially in east asia, such as Japane and Korea. locals are usually very proud of it, so should be fairly familiar with the subject
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