Postcrossing Blog

What is it like to be a mail carrier? What are the joys and the perils of the job? Is it a “normal” 9 to 5 job? What is the career like?

We’ve wondered about these and other questions, until we found a video that answers them all! Gary Poole is a postman for the Royal Mail, and told icould.com all about his job, in this short video interview:

What do you think? Would you like to be a mail carrier?

On a different note, the winners of last week’s stamp-postcards giveaway have just been randomly picked by Paulo’s little script! They are StojakSiblings from Germany and Renessaince from Belarus. Congratulations! And a big thank you to everyone who shared their favourite stamps on the comments – we’ve discovered some real gems!

They say Guimarães is the place where Portugal was born, the cradle of the nation. This small city in the north of the country has a lot to offer and is this year’s European Capital of Culture (along with Maribor in Slovenia).

The students and teachers from the local secondary school “Martins Sarmento” in Guimarães want to involve Postcrossing in the celebrations. Their idea is to build a heart-shaped mosaic resembling the logo of the European Capital of Culture.

And for that of course, they need your help! The school invites all postcrossers to send a postcard until March 9th to the following address:

Escola Secundária Martins Sarmento
A/C Cristiana Cerdeira
Alameda Prof. Abel Salazar
4810–247 Guimarães
Portugal

You can write a personal message, your thoughts on Guimarães or just “I am part of it!”.

Write your e-mail address as well: you’ll receive an e-mail from them with a picture of the finished mosaic. The first 20 postcards received will also receive a postcard from the European Capital of Culture.

The students from the school “Martins Sarmento” thank you for your collaboration, and welcome you into their city!

Postcards go hand in hand with stamps, so it’s no surprise that many postcrossers are also stamp lovers.

A postcrosser (who wishes to remain anonymous) used to collect stamps throughout childhood and still keeps a great appreciation for many of the beautiful images on them. So they decided to create some postcards with the most beautiful stamps available in their collection!

The result is a selection of beautiful cards, featuring detailed stamps from days gone. From Monaco to Sweden, Chad to Ivory Coast, these stamp-postcards will surprise and delight you.

This member generously offered us a couple of packs of stamp-postcards, which we’re giving away today.

To win one of them, leave a comment below telling us about your favourite stamp (leave a link to the image, if you can find it!). Why is it special to you, or what attracts you in it?

In a week, we’ll close the comments and draw two winners, who’ll each win a pack of 14 different stamp-postcards. Good luck!

Meet Serena, aka AllSerene from England! She’s both an avid postcrosser and a birdwatcher, an interest she shares with her cat Lucy :)

Here is what she had to say to our interview questions:

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

Two online friends (Enitharmon and Niles) blogged about it, within a few days of one another. I thought it sounded interesting, visited the site and was hooked! This was about three and a half years ago, not long before Postcrossing reached the first million postcards sent.

I’m almost entirely housebound, due to serious health problems, and I loved the idea both of being able to make contact with people around the world and of seeing places I would never be able to visit in person. Postcrossing has added considerably to the variety and fun in my life!

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

Being fascinated by wildlife, I’ve taken part in the British Trust for Ornithology’s Garden Birdwatch for several years, recording the varieties of birds who visit my garden each week. This means that, as well as enjoying watching the birds outside my window, I’m able to contribute, in a small way, to environmentalists knowledge of the changing bird populations.

I also have a much loved cat, who shares my interest in bird watching (and who’s old enough not to be a danger to the birds).

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

My cards get put through the letterbox on my front door, to arrive on my doormat. My lovely posties collect any mail I leave out for them, on my windowsill.

This normally works extremely well. On one occasion though, a card, GB-37113, took the scenic route to the US, via Germany, having remained wrapped in a plastic bag (to protect them from the rain) with another card, GB-37117, destined for a German postcrosser. Luckily, maju30, having told me what had happened, very kindly forwarded it on to it’s proper destination. I must admit to being relieved that it was a postcard which took such a detour, rather than a letter to my bank or something of that kind!

I have a display of recent, and favourite cards on display in my kitchen and, when cards are taken down from there, they are stored in boxes, sorted by country. I also scan all my cards and have the screensaver on my computer set to show a slideshow of my pictures. These always provoke a lot of comment from visitors and often mesmerise them, so that discussions will be broken off when a friend’s attention has been grabbed by one of my cards!

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

I found it impossible to choose just one or two cards out of all the ones I’ve received. The pictures above show some of the cards currently on display, which are a mixture of cards I’ve recently received and favourites which refuse to be dislodged.

What is it your favorite part of the Postcrossing process?

I love requesting addresses, wondering who, and where, I will be sending a card to this time. Having received an address, I love trying to work out which of my cards that person would particularly enjoy and trying to get a feel for the person I’ll be writing to, so that I can try to make the card as interesting as possible for that person. That said, later on, I’ll be keeping a close watch for the postman, wanting to see what cards he’s bringing me that day, as I always very much enjoy receiving a new group of cards, looking to see what the pictures are and reading the messages on the back.

On September 2011, Mary Robinette Kowal decided it was time for a break. She spent the entire month offline, and asked her friends to communicate with her through letters. The results of this personal challenge were a revelation:

When I write back, I find that I slow down and write differently than I do with an email. Email is all about the now. Letters are different, because whatever I write needs to be something that will be relevant a week later to the person to whom I am writing. In some ways it forces me to think about time more because postal mail is slower. “By the time you get this…” It is relaxing. It is intimate. It is both lasting and ephemeral.

How so? I find that I will often read the letters that I receive twice. Once when I get them and again as I write back. So, that makes it more lasting. It is more ephemeral because I don’t have copies of the letters that I write and I am the only one who has copies of the letters that my correspondents write. So, more ephemeral.

I know a lot of postcrossers share these feelings – this is part of the reason why Postcrossing exists!

Mary’s decided to turn February into a Month of Letters, in which she challenges herself and everyone who decides do join to write and send at least a piece of postal mail every day. Here are the rules:

Mail at least one item through the post every day it runs. Write a postcard, a letter, send a picture, or a cutting from a newspaper, or a fabric swatch.
Write back to everyone who writes to you. This can count as one of your mailed items.

We can’t help but feeling postcrossers have their work cut out for them in this challenge… :) Nevertheless, we wanted to dare you all to do it! Write postcards, letters or aerogrammes or surprise a friend with an unexpected package. Maybe even pick a Facebook/Twitter friend and send them with an offline “hello!”.

Are you up to Mary’s challenge? Grab your stationery and stamps and start writing! :)

PS – Scrutiny set up a forum post for members who are doing this challenge to keep track of their progress!