Pretty as a postcard

I was buying a card for my Grandmother the other day; something to cheer her up. I was in a small local shop, and I noticed then, alongside the normal postcards of snowy Swiss mountains, trains, cows and cathedrals, there was a postcard of Altstetten; my little neighbourhood. I found this a little amusing, and I bought it purely because I think my Grandmother would like to see the neighbourhood where I am living. It made me wonder; what deems something worthy of printing a postcard with it on? Is it the number of tourists that visit the place? The density of hotels and guest-houses?
I never saw a postcard of the neighbourhood I lived in Calais; if one had existed I would not have sent it as friends would probably have sent an emergency helicopter to escort me out of the grim-looking place; the France that you only normally saw on the news during riots. There were not many in Valenciennes; but it was not a tourist destination. In Reggio Emilia, there were very few; it is such a beautiful town; more beautiful in my opinion than Venice; purely because it is infinitely more real; more full of Italians and their lives than the museum city on water. Yet, because Reggio Emilia tended to be bypassed by tourists, for the simple fact that it has not been marketed particularly for tourism, the task of finding a postcard to send to family or friends was tricky. Yet Reggio Emilia is simply beautiful, in my opinion.
But is something postcard-worthy simply because it is touristy? I think people should sending postcards of places that people might want to see; not places everyone has seen already. People’s neighbourhoods, thought-evoking graffiti found by a café where a friend had coffee, the local street gang; things that actually say something about the trip…
Above are the postcards I would perhaps have sent from the places I have lived…

(in random order: Reggio Emilia, Calais, Altstetten Zurich and Valenciennes)

The picture of Via Volta in Reggio reminds me of wandering around the streets of Reggio Emilia, without a map, just discovering beautiful little streets, chapels and shops full of delicious looking local delicacies.

The burned-out car in Calais reminds me of the challenges of teaching children who grow up with that landscape as a normality, for whom it is entirely normal to hear sirens all night, to wake up and find there has been a fire in their neighbour's flat. It was really a rough place, and one that I would not like to live in again, but I had an amazing ten months there and wouldn't change my experience of 'la ZUP.'

The station in Altstetten, in snow. This actually reminds me of flat-hunting in December; when I found myself on a number of occasions walking down dark streets in snowstorms, clutching a print-out from google maps.

A square in Valenciennes; this is not the big square; the Place d'Armes, but a calmer one a few streets away, where a great cafe put tables and chairs outside in the spring and summer, and the Polish lady would hang local art on the walls. The cafe had perhaps the smallest toilet I have ever been to; you had to go in, sit on the toilet and put your legs either side of the seat in order to close the door, and as you sat your nose almost touched the door.