Postcrossing Blog

We’ve just received another photo-filled report from the Little Mail Carriers, all the way from Galway! Read on their adventures in Ireland from their most recent host, ned44440, who did a wonderful job showing them around! :)

We arrived in Galway, Ireland on 20th May 2013 and settled in quite quickly. We enjoyed a few days rest and then got busy with our exploring. As our host works for the Post Office we got to meet some staff who were too shy to appear on camera. We saw how to prepare the payroll for such a large organisation but we can’t pass on any details as it is all confidential… It was exciting to see how it is done, though! During this first week we also saw some lovely green postboxes and some postal vehicles.

We were excited to learn that our host had planned a few trips for us! She first took us to County Roscommon with a lovely group known as TARA (or the Tirellan Active Retired Association). We travelled on a bus and visited the Strokestown House & Famine Museum, and then travelled on to the Dr. Douglas Hyde Interpretative Centre.

Strokestown House was both lovely and sad. It told the story of The Great Irish famine of the 1840′s which is now regarded as the single greatest social disaster of 19th century Europe. Between 1845 and 1850, when blight devastated the potato crop, in excess of two million people – almost one-quarter of the entire population – either died or emigrated.

Dr Douglas Hyde was the very first President of the Irish Republic!

Our next adventure was to visit Dublin to attend a Postcrossing Meet-Up and what a wonderful time we had. There were many postcards to be signed (and bought!!). One of the first things we did was visit the Postal History Museum in the General Post Office (GPO). Did you know that the GPO in Dublin played a significent role during the 1916 Rising which led to Irish independence? You can learn more at www.anpost.ie/heritage.

Our host said that while she always enjoys visiting the museum she is a little upset that a lot of the items in the museum are things she actually used during her earlier working life – makes her feel old. We saw a lot of the stamps issued by the Post Office down through the years, mail bags, sorting frames, telephone exchanges and many other interesting items.

At the meeting we met chrissybaby, fisherman, icspi and jr11577. We had a great day out in Dublin but were exhausted after it.

“Could this trip get any better?” we thought… and it did! Even though we were preparing for our onward trip we found two things we just had to stay put for. The first was a Post Office function… now, how could we resist that?

We discovered that one of our hosts colleagues, Marie, intends to drive a Post Office articulated truck in convoy with other Irish and British CWU members as part of the CWU (Communication Worker’s Union) Humanitarian Aid. Each year, members of the CWU both in Ireland and the UK fill trucks full of necessary items and drive the aid to exactly where it needs to go – a personal delivery with a difference. The trucks are filled with donations from many local businesses together with goods purchased with money gathered at fund-raising events. This year the trucks will head to Moldova. Marie is the first Irish female to drive one of the trucks. She held a table-quiz and raised a substantial amount of money. We had such fun but we didn’t win (truth be told, our quiz team-mates weren’t great but don’t say we said that!).

Here we are with Marie. Also in the pic are Jarlath, Geraldine, Brian and Damien.

Last (but definitely not) least, we found our way to the Titanic Centre in Belfast. What a truly awesome experience!! One definitely not to be missed if you ever get the chance. We first visited the Nomadic, which was the tender ship to the Titanic in Cherbourg. The harbour in Cherbourg was too shallow for the Titanic to berth at the docks so passengers were ferried out to her via the Nomadic. First and Second Class was opulent but Third Class (steerage)… not so opulent.

Here we are standing on the helm of the Nomadic with the Titanic Centre in the background.

And this is how the Nomadic looked like!

We then visited the magificent Titanic Centre. Here we learned the full story of the RMS Titanic from the day she was first thought of up to and including her discovery at the bottom of the sea, and also about the personal stories behind it.

Did you know that the Titanic was a Royal Mail Ship (hence the abbreviation RMS)? Her mail room had the capacity to carry 3,423 sacks of mail each containing up to 2,000 items of mail. Queenstown in County Cork in Ireland was Titanic’s last port of call before she set sail for America. It was called the saddest place as it was the main port of emigration from Ireland in south of the country. Most people who left Ireland in those days were never expected to return home again. It was never more true than on this occasion!

But it wasn’t until we visited Titanic’s Dock & Pump-House that we got a true measure of the size of the Titanic. We were able to descend right down to the bottom of the drydock.

We saw the keel blocks on which she sat while in the drydock being fitted out for her maiden voyage. We can but imagine what it was like for the workers who built the Titanic. This is an experience that will never leave us.

We travelled back to Galway on Tuesday and took Wednesday as our day of rest before our onward journey to our next big adventure. What an amazing world we live in!

Thank you ned44440 for taking them with you on these fantastic expeditions! On they go…

If you’re one of the only people who still hasn’t heard about PostSecret, here’s where you can (and should) check it out – www.postsecret.com. BUT WAIT! Before you click on the link, you might want to finish this article, because reading people’s secrets is as addictive as eating cookies or watching episodes of your favorite TV show…. once you start, you can’t stop! Which is precisely the reason that Frank Warren, creator of PostSecret, knew this concept would turn out to be a big hit.

PostSecret is an ongoing community mail art project, where people from all walks of life anonymously mail in a secret of theirs on a homemade postcard. There are no rules or restrictions made on the content of the secret, only that it be a real secret that has never been spoken before. Each week, a selection of received postcards are posted on the PostSecret website.

The anonymity of these secrets is what makes the concept so brilliant and compelling. Admissions range from one’s secret desires, embarrassing facts about themselves, to hopes, dreams or just silly quirks. The website is updated every Sunday, and there are always at least a few secrets that you can directly relate to. Knowing that someone else out there has the same secret as you is comforting and empowering and has a healing effect on both the writer and reader, according to Warren.

PostSecret was reported as the 10th most popular site amongst female students in USA, according to Youth Trends in 2008. Due to the success of the site, Warren came out with a book, PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives, in which he talks about his experiences with people all over the world who were inspired by PostSecret, allowing them to have dialogue on topics they felt they couldn’t before.

In addition to the initial book, there are now three other books that showcase PostSecret postcards, as well as some other Postsecret-themed events, which you can check out here.

What about you? Have you ever shared a secret on a postcard? :)

PostEurop is once again hosting their yearly competition to choose the best EUROPA stamp of the year!

If you’ve seen the new stamps, you’ll know that the theme for 2013 is Van of the Postman. Every country has its own means of moving mail around – from bicycles to trucks, old school or futuristic options. They are a visible and recognisable symbol of the postal services’ connection to their communities.

Here is a small selection of the stamps on this year’s competition:

PostEurop says:

Those vehicles painted with distinctive colours are seen each day on almost every road and even highways across Europe, carrying personal effects and messages to millions of customers each day. The modern day vans are quick, efficient and more ecological compared to historical vehicles. Depending on the country, its culture, terrain and climate, each postal operator has their own story to tell. So, philatelic designers had set out to work on their interpretive designs capturing the past and/or present and the results are here.

Aren’t they all lovely? We hope to receive a lot of postcards with EUROPA stamps this year… but first, let’s vote on which one of them is the best! :)

To see all the stamps and vote, go to the competition page and pick your favorite. May the best stamp win!

PS – We’re always curious to know… which one did you pick?

Meet sevvie (aka Hanna), who lives in Helsinki, Finland. She likes films (and going to movie festivals) and practising the different writing styles when a member provides the address in their native alphabet or writing script! :)

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

I think it was a cold autumn day some 6–7 years ago when a friend of mine from school mentioned having Postcrossing as her hobby. She might have been on her way to post some cards or buy a few stamps and I might have asked what they were for, I can’t quite recall, but in any case I got rather curious about the whole thing. I have always loved snail mail and Postcrossing seemed like a great way to find people who thought the same, and not just within Finland but practically all over the world. I also thought it would be a rather inexpensive and not a very time-consuming pastime, but I’ve later had to revise that idea a bit. Also, cards can really take up space! But I don’t mind any of these things because all in all Postcrossing is a wonderful hobby.

What is it your favorite part of the Postcrossing process?

As much as I love receiving cards, I have to admit that choosing a card to match each recipient is by far my favourite part. I enjoy writing small messages on the cards, preferably so that there is not much space left afterwards. It’s also great if someone requests a drawing, or if the recipient has included their address in their native language as well. It’s nice to get to practice different writing styles, and I expect it’s also easier for a postal worker to handle the card that way too. I especially like writing Cyrillic and Japanese/Chinese addresses. So far I haven’t seen that many Korean or Thai addresses, and I’d very much like to try Arabic as well. Although I’d probably be a bit nervous doing it. With unfamiliar alphabets there’s always the risk of writing gibberish instead of something understandable. But it is always great to try.

Show us your mailbox, your mailman/mailwoman, your postoffice or the place where you post or keep your postcards!

We finally got a new mailbox some months ago. It was not ours to buy, so we had to wait nearly a year for the new one. The neighbourhood we live in is known as “the rainiest place in Finland”, so having a leaky mailbox that suspiciously looked like someone had bumped against it several times with their car was not very pleasant. Often my cards would be if not soggy and a bit torn, then at least slightly damp, and they would curl oddly as they dried. So we were glad to get a new mailbox. Even though it doesn’t look that special, we like it a lot.

I store my received postcards in albums and keep my cards-to-send in old shoe-boxes. Or that’d be the ideal situation anyway! Often the cards are anywhere there is some free space until I have time to organise them, which can take a while. I also upload my received cards on Picasa for easy access, though obviously without all the wonderful messages, handwriting styles, stamps, postmarks and stickers.

I used to leave my cards in the Post Museum special cancellation box, but now that the museum has moved to Tampere I use the General Post Office’s special cancellation box. I also like to attend First Day events to send cards with special postmarks and brand new stamps.

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

I have received so many wonderful cards it feels strange to try to narrow them down to one favourite, or even several. I prefer art cards and cards related to books, films and television, but as long as a card is visually pleasing, I’ll love it. Here there are three official Postcrossing cards I have found especially lovely:

US-761954 from Karen-Campbell, DE-2024899 from Kaate, PL-643913 from krystyna (with an honourable mention to DE-1524632 from glaesmann). And below are three direct swap cards from Jodie05, Lucia28jp, and WY, respectively. All of them have made me even fonder of – and more fascinated with – the world we live in.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

Well, I don’t know about interesting, but I really enjoy films. Surprising, I know. But I think watching films is actually rather similar to Postcrossing, in a way. You get to see small glimpses of other cultures, traditions and ways of thinking. I also love languages and music, so I’m always equally as eager to hear a film as I am to see it. It’s a wonderful thing that there are so many outstanding film festivals here in the Capital Region. Film festivals definitely do broaden the selection and you get to see films from all over the world. The newest additions are, I think, Helsinki Cine Aasia and Season Film Festival, held for the first time this March and April. I was glad to go and see three films at Helsinki Cine Aasia, two from China and one from Japan. I usually buy a festival voucher that allows you to see ten or eleven films during a festival. My favourite festivals are Espoo Ciné and Rakkautta & Anarkiaa (Love & Anarchy), the two major ones, but there are numerous smaller ones that I also like to attend.

Besides films, I love reading speculative fiction and tending to plants.

Is there anything that you are passionate about?

Passionate is a rather strong word and perhaps not something I’d easily describe myself with; I just try to live my life the best way I can and enjoy it to the fullest. I suppose that is something I am quite eager to realise, in a way, though it’s a rather difficult goal to be sure. Obviously there is much that I view as very important, such as my family and friends, the state of the environment, and so on, and things I really enjoy doing, like reading and cooking. Overall I think I’m also a bit of a do-gooder, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I believe I’d be quite unhappy if I weren’t vegetarian, hated recycling or never bought clothes and furniture second hand, and so on.

And if I think about all the wonderful things I’d miss terribly if they’d suddenly be gone, the list would be at least as long as the number of kilometres our postcards have travelled. Stories and dreams, dancing, music, songs and singing, everything in nature, solving a puzzle, baking a cake, the feeling of joy I get whenever one of my postcards gets registered… Even the tiniest thing can really make a difference. I could say that I’m quite keen to make myself appreciate these things, big and small, as they deserve to be appreciated.

Saying that I’m actually passionate about life feels a bit trite, but I guess that’s exactly what it is at the end of the day.

Happy postcrossing and joyful summer!

One of the most frequent ways members find out about Postcrossing is through penpals… which leads us to believe that many of you love to write long letters as well as postcards! So for those of you, today we have a recommendation of a special league, a sort of penpal club with a twist… meet the League of Extraordinary Penpals!

The League of Extraodinary Penpals (LEP for short) was started by Laura of Please Deliver To and Julie of Penpal of the Week, both postcrossers and penpals. Their goal was to connect lovers of letters and postcards with other extraordinary mail enthusiasts.

You might be wondering what makes it so extraordinary… well, everyone in the league goes by their superhero alterego, complete with superpowers! These range from “composing legible letters while hurtling through the New York City subway system” to the ability to make “super duper awesome envelopes”. :)

Subscription is paid but well worth it: members have access to their monthly newsletters, filled to the brim with interesting articles, printables, member’s spotlights, mail challenges, stationery offers and of course, penpal opportunities! Plus, there are exclusive LEP groups on several social media websites, on which you can chat and exchange ideas with other members of the community. But be warned – they’re extremely addictive in their contagious enthusiasm for all-things snail mail & stationery!

Sounds interesting? Then head over to their page for more details!