Postcrossing Blog

Six years ago I turned the switch on to open Postcrossing to everyone, without realizing how popular it would become, let alone how many different people it would touch and connect.

Today, with the mark of 8 million postcards already in sight and over 200 thousand members from all over the world, I realize that I might – almost accidentally -, have started a postcard revolution!

As the founder of Postcrossing, I often get thanked for starting this project. However, I often feel the roles are reversed and that I should be the one thanking all the members instead. Without every Postcrosser, this project would not be what it is today. While I’m very proud to have started it all, you are the ones truly responsible for its growth and success. For being such an awesome community, here’s my honest: thank you!

And, to celebrate this very special day, I’ve prepared a special surprise for you all: during today, all members can send 6 extra postcards – that’s on top of your current limit! This applies to all existing accounts (not new ones) and it’s valid until 23h59 of July 14th (UTC+1), so hurry up!

We also want to thank all of you who sent us photos on our request: we have received more than we could have wished for and we’ve been striking smile after smile after seeing you all. Ana is already working on a video (no easy task with so many photos!) and we’ll post it here once it’s ready, together with the winners of the lottery.

So now, without further ado, please join me and the little mail carriers in wishing,

Christa is a member from Flensburg, a German town very near Denmark. Christina is a schoolteacher in Denmark, so she crosses the border everyday on her way to work! :) Here is what she had to say:

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

I came across Postcrossing when I was on a summertrip around South/East Europe. Together with my travel-friend Silvia I met with my good old penfriend Sibylle in Vienna after our tour. Sibylle was showing us around in Vienna and told me about Postcrossing. So when I came home again I looked at the Postcrossing page and started taking part.

I love receiving mail from all over the world. I have had penfriends since I learnt English in school, but the last years I have less time for long letters, so postcard writing is a great addition… I still can send mail out in the world and receive from close and far away.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

I love bike trips, most music, theatre/musicals/opera, scrapbooking, meeting friends, skiing, good movies (love pirate movies!), reading (esp. about history and other cultures), collecting stamps and souvenir magnets (besides postcards of course), writing letters, etc…

My biggest interest is traveling, I love the “adventure” of visiting other places in the world and I’m very thankful that I’m able to travel some. When friends ask me if I collect something… I usually answer: postcards, stamps, magnets… and countries :)

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

I mail my mail from both Denmark and Germany. I live in the very North of Germany and I work in Denmark as a schoolteacher. I have sent a lot of mail from Denmark so far but since April postage is “horribly ” expensive… so I have started mailing from Germany again.

And this is where we have our postshop and I get my stamps:

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

Favorite postcard I received… I could show MANY as I have so many favorites. Here are some of the cards I received lately which I like a lot:

As you can see I love landscapes. Some of my favorites are mountains… maybe because I grew up with Alpin skiing (in Austria!) and here where I live we have no mountains :( So every time I receive a mountain card. I remember the great times I had in the mountains.

What is it your favorite part of the Postcrossing process?

Receiving cards almost every day and meeting people from all over the world. Sending out cards from my “little world ” here where I live or places I have visited.

Have you met any other members in real life?

So far I have meet Robin67 from Austria, Gforp, Gogge1 and Dorthe from Denmark. Looking forward to meet Dorthe and Gogge1 soon again in Ålborg.

Exciting news, everyone! We just got a big letter from the little mail carriers travel diary… they’ve been to Australia where they were hosted by Mundoo! Here’s their latest report from the road:

G’day Mates!

Here we are in Australia or 'down under’ as many of the Northern Hemisphere mates refer to Oz . We are visiting Mundoo or Vicki as she is also known. Vicki lives on Hindmarsh Island, which is in the estuary of the Murray River (the longest river in Australia) where it exits to the Southern Ocean. She lives in the state of South Australia .

We got our first look at an Australian Post Box and offered to deliver some mail. They have a bright red post box here.

This is where Mundoo posts her Postcrossing postcards at the Goolwa post office.

We don’t know what it is about Hindmarsh Island but the sunrises and sunsets are just spectacular. Vicki’s house in on Mundoo Channel (that’s where she got her membername from) which is part of the Coorong National Park.

Hindmarsh Island used to be accessed from the mainland by a ferry but about 10 years ago there was a bridge constructed joining Hindmarsh Island and the mainland at the inland Riverport of Goolwa.

You all know about the Sydney Harbor bridge, well Hindmarsh Island has the Hindmarsh Island bridge. We sat at the Goolwa wharf with a paddle steam boat, the OscarW tied up there and with the Murray River flowing past under the bridge. There is a strong paddle-boating history at Goolwa from the early days of Australian history before the railroads were built. Paddle-boats were the only way that cargo could be transported down the Murray River and they landed at Goolwa for loading onto ships.

We visited some Australian animals. We get our first look at a kangaroo. Vicki said this wasn’t a big kangaroo, it sure looked big enough to us!

Then we got up real close to a koala. Gee he has big claws but then we suppose he needs them for climbing gum trees all the time looking for food. Did you know that koala's only eat eucalypt leaves?

A kangaroo came over and gave Little Ana a big kiss as a welcome to Australia. Little Paulo was very happy it wasn’t him being smooched.

We saw a Joey in it’s mother’s pouch. He looks too big to fit in there we thought but he looked quite happy even with a leg sticking out. We didn’t get too close because we didn’t want to be adopted by the mother kangaroo.

We went for a trip with Vicki to the next state, which is called Victoria. The border between the two states is 300 km / 187 miles away from where Vicki lives. It only took us 4 hours driving. We were amazed at how large Australia is. All of Europe would fit into Australia. All of USA minus Alaska would fit as well. Australia is the biggest island in the world and has a population of 22 million.

Our destination was a town in Victoria called Moyston. It is the birthplace of Australian football or Aussie Rules as the locals call it.

There is a wonderful plaque at Moyston telling the history of Aussie Rules and Tom Wills who was the founder. Aussie Rules is nothing like any other football played in the world.

Moyston is at the base of the Grampians and we stayed at Jennifer’s house, who is Vicki’s sister. Jennifer wasn’t there because she was in Perth 3250km / 2020 miles away competing in the Judo games. Up the road from Jennifer’s house was the spot where gold was first found in the area. This sparked a huge gold rush in 1854

Back home again to Hindmarsh Island and the ocean in that area is of historical importance because it is a place where two scientific explorer Captains met in 1802 offshore while travelling in opposite directions mapping Australia for the first time. The encounter is significant because the encounter between Captain Matthew Flinders (English) and Captain Nicholas Baudin (French) was peaceful, even though their countries were at war at the time, But the two Captains put that aside and met in friendship and exploration and called the bay they met in Encounter Bay.

We met up with Apty (also known as Graeme) at Encounter Bay and had a good chat with him. Do you know he is really a kiwi?

We tried some Aussie food. We had a Lamington. Most accounts of the creation of the lamington agree it was named after Lord Lamington, who served as Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901. One of the claims of how the Lamington came into creation was that the Lamingtons’ chef at Queensland’s Government House, Armand Gallad, was called upon at short notice to provide something to feed unexpected guests during the busy period leading up to Federation in 1900. According to the Melbourne Age newspaper, Gallad cut up some left over French vanilla sponge cake baked the day before, dipped the slices in chocolate and set them in coconut.

Lamington Recipe & Another Lamington Recipe

Well we have had a great time with Vicki, thank you for having us visit and showing us some of Australia.

Now we have packed our bags and are heading off on our next adventure.

We wonder where we are going?

Remember around this time last year, we asked you to send us a photo of you mailing your postcards, and then did a neat little video?

Well, we loved it so much we want to do it again this year! We love seeing your smiley faces!

So, for Postcrossing’s sixth birthday, we would like you to send us a photo of yourself, holding 6 postcards, like Paulo is doing below:

Mail it to birthday@postcrossing.com until July 13th. After that we’ll mix them all together and make a neat slideshow with all your smiles and postcards! :)

And of course there will be prizes! We’ll do a lottery with one kit of the World’s smallest post service and two sets of Playmobil Little Mail Carriers. Awesome, right? Go go go!

BraveJ is our spotlight feature today! Ana, from Serbia, is fond of geography, Native Americans and tango! Here’s what she had to say:

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

Some years ago I was into penpalling and one of my penfriends told me about Postcrossing. I liked the idea and I was hooked immediately!

I’ve loved postcards since I was a child. Even before I could read and write properly, I enjoyed looking at the cards that my family received from their friends and relatives. For years I loved to send cards from my holidays to my friends, and to receive them, too! But, that was until modern technology took over and most people just stopped sending real postcards. I missed that and Postcrossing seemed to be the perfect place to quench my thirst for real mail!

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

Just like many other postcrossers, I also collect stamps. I guess it somehow “goes with the territory” when you’re into postcards or letters. I enjoy beautiful stamps as much as postcards.

I love reading (I’ve always been a bit of a bookworm) and I enjoy wandering around bookstores. Many of them also sell postcards, so it’s a perfect combination! I often use my received postcards as bookmarks and I have this silly habit of trying to match the card to the story of the book I read.

I’ve been doing different kinds of fitness for a very long time and I love it. After many years it’s not so much about keeping fit anymore, but about the positive energy I get from exercising, from interesting choreographs and great music, and the people I meet there.

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

This is the post office closest to my home and I send most of my cards from there:

I also often use this mailbox in the city centre. This photo was taken by another Postcrossing member after our mini-meeting, look how many cards we signed!

I keep most of my cards in boxes and I love going through them from time to time. Here are two of my “treasure chests”:

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

I won’t say anything new if I say that most cards I received are special to me in some way and it would be impossible to show you all my favourites! So, for this occasion, I chose three cards. I’ve been interested in Native Americans since childhood and this card is one of the loveliest I’ve ever received:

Wolves are my favourite wild animals and wolf cards are an important part of my collection. These two wolves are among the most beloved members of my “pack”:

I love cards with tango, there is something indescribably beautiful about this dance. This is one of the very few tango cards I received, so it’s even more precious:

What is it your favorite part of the Postcrossing process?

I can’t say that I have a favourite part, because I enjoy everything – the anticipation of requesting a new address, picking the right card, writing a message, finding wonderful surprises in my mailbox almost every day… Postcrossing opened a whole new world to me. I like to think about it as a way of opening doors or windows to the world. I can’t afford to travel much, so I “travel” through postcards. They introduced me to many amazing places that I may never be able to visit in real life.

But for me, one of the best things about Postcrossing (beside postcards, of course) are the people behind the cards. Since I joined this project and especially since I joined the Postcrossing forum, I met so many nice and friendly people who brought a huge smile on my face with their cards and messages many times. Because of those people, I’m incredibly happy to be a part of the big Postcrossing family.