Postcrossing Blog

This week’s spotlight interview comes from marja2006, from Finland! She and her daughter are avid postcrossers, and even her son contributes to the collection! Here is what she had to say:

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

I saw a short story about Postcrossing in the newspaper – I googled to find the link to the pages. This happened in 2006. I have always loved to receive postcards. When travelling was not so easy, people used to send much more cards – now when people travel a lot, there are not so many who would send a postcard from their holiday – even if you asked them to! For a lazy traveller this is also a great way to see the world – you can see places you would probably never visit, and a postcard can show you the familiar places in a way you would never see them if you were there yourself as the weather and the lights vary a lot.

It took about a year before I had enough of courage to go to the forum and join the tags and Round Robins, but then I was hooked with tags and swaps…

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

I don’t have too much time for hobbies, but taking photos is one of them. I used to play piano when I was young, just for own fun. My daughter takes me to concerts every now and then (or is it the other way around?) – and tries to keep me up with what’s popular.

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

My mail comes to postbox, which is in the postoffice next to the railway station. In this picture the postoffice is in the left, with the orange and blue colours of the Finnish Post.

Here’s a closer look at the postoffice from outside, with new postboxes for priority mail (the blue boxes) and economy mail (the orange boxes):

I also take my cards mostly to the ladies in my postoffice for cancellation. Here’s a picture of one of the lovely ladies at my postoffice taking care of my mail:

and here’s how it looks inside my postoffice:

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

There are so many postcards which are special and there are so many new lovely cards coming every week, but here are some of them:

This card I received from my forum friend mlysao from Tahiti – she had it made as a maxicard for me with the special cancellation of the solar eclipse – it really warms my heart to think it arrived from the other side of the world as a RAS:

Another RAS card which made me very happy, a card from Shanghai meet-up in 2008, sent by Linying and signed among others by Paulo and Ana, the founders of Postcrossing:

And I am not wondering at all that Paulo and Ana ended up in Slovenia when I look at this beautiful postcard, one of my all time favourites, which I received in my biggest swap ever:

Have you been surprised by any place that you have received a postcard from or sent a postcard to?

Card from Greenland with ID GL-8 was a nice surprise at the time there were not many active users and also cards from Uruguay, UY-32 and UY-45 were nice surprises – neither of them was sent by a local user! Both of them came from a user with Finnish background! :D And I felt really lucky when I received a card from Tuvalu – TV-222 – which was sent to celebrate the Earth Day.

Have you inspired anyone else to join Postcrossing or start collections of their own?

Only my own daughter – she had a long break with it, but now as Finland was approaching the id FI-1000000, I got her writing some cards, too, as we read a comment of my postcrossing friend’s daughter of teamwork in Facebook.

I am also very happy of the fact that my younger son sends postcards when going on holidays – not only to me but others as well! And he also buys cards for my collection!

Airmail has been on my mind lately, those irresistible blue and red stripes! So simple and yet so pretty, they always bring back memories of long hand written letters from friends far away…
These days they seemed to have popped out of the vintage envelopes to be featured in all sorts of products! Check these out:

Clockwise from the top left corner:

• Airmail Pillow from Bonjour Mon Coussin
• Airmail Mighty Wallet from Dynomighty (we got one of these some time ago, and they’re fantastic!)
• Airmail Zipper Pouch from heydayhandmade on Etsy
• Mailer Tote Bag from Mokuyobi on Etsy
• Japanese Masking Tape from PrettyTape on Etsy
• Crochet Airmail from EternalSunshine on Etsy

Know of others? Please share in the comments!

In the 1830s, the United Kingdom and the United States started carrying mail bags by train on their normal routes. Then, some years later, George B. Armstrong, assistant postmaster at Chicago, came up with the idea of sorting the mail on the train, while en route to its destination, to save time. The Railway Post Office (or RPO) was born!

A Railway Post Office looked like a normal train car on the outside, but had a unique interior design, with movable cast-iron fixtures that held the mail bags for sorting. These could also be folded if space was needed, as the train wagons tended to get very crowded! They also had their own cancellation stamps used only on board, and a special hook to snatch a bag of mail on the towns where the train didn’t stop. You can a demonstration of its use here.

They became so widespread that in the 1880s, most passenger train routes in the US had their own Railway Post Office, allowing for a very efficient and speedy mail delivery. At the peak of their popularity in the 1940s, RPO’s were in use in over 9000 train routes, covering more than 200,000 route miles. In the next few decades though, the service would slowly decline and be replaced by airmail. The last Railway Post Office, which travelled between New York and Washington D.C., closed in 1977.

Railway Post Offices now live in museums around the world, and on these beautiful pictures by the Smithsonian Institution on Flickr.

Inge Löök (real name Ingeborg Lievonen) is a Finnish artist born in Helsinki in 1951. She was once a professional gardener, but today she is most famous for her Granny postcards which so many postcrossers love and collect.

When she was a child, Inge lived with her family in a 7-storey building in Helsinki. In the same building lived two older women, Alli and Fifi, who later became the inspiration for the characters in her postcards. She says the women look nearly the same as their real-life models… but they have a lot more fun!

Inge’s look on life is one of optimism and happiness, and it shows on the pictures she draws. The grannies are always happy and having fun, and their motto is “Time is not money and spending it isn’t a sin”.

She has drawn over 300 postcards on different topics, and has also illustrated several stamps and children’s books. Today she lives in Pernå, a village east of Helsinki.

This week’s spotlight interview comes from Bulgaria. dj_christina loves mailboxes and is an avid postcard collector, as you will see by her very neat albums! Here is what she had to say:

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

I learned about Postcrossing from a friend on a travel website, called VirtualTourist. It’s common for people who love to travel to like sending and receiving postcards too. Especially when you don’t have the chance to travel often :)

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

I like everything mail related, not just the postcards, but also stamps, and I have a small collection of mail-related objects: such as an English mailbox magnet, Danish mailbox piggy bank; I also love travel and photography.

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

I keep the postcards in files, I have two shelves of them. And another shelf of stamp albums :)

And here is how a typical Bulgarian mailbox looks like, it’s yellow:

And here’s a mailbox piggy bank:

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

It’s very hard to decide which one, I have dozens of favourite postcards!! But I chose this English mailbox one, which has matching stamps on the back! Did I mention I like mailboxes? :) And I like postcards with matching stamps, so this one is the perfect combination. It was sent to me by AllSerene (also on Postcrossing forum). It was very nice of her to read my preferences and send me the perfect postcard :)

What are you passionate about?

I’m interested in politics but this is partly due to my work. I’m passionate about freedom and open-mindedness.

What is your favourite part of the Postcrossing process?

Picking the card, choosing the stamps, oh, and checking my mailbox every day!