Postcrossing Blog

Did you know there are companies out there whose job is to measure the efficiency of postal systems worldwide, to help them improve their services?

The Quotas team

Quotas is one of these companies. Based in Hamburg, they conduct international evaluations for the postal services of several countries, including Posta Slovenije, Belgian Post International, Deutsche Post, Post Danmark, La Poste France, Royal Mail and the Universal Postal Union.

But of course they can’t go to every single city or country in the world to send and measure how fast mail is delivered… that’s where you can come in!

Quotas relies on worldwide volunteers for this task: test letters (mostly with real stamps) are sent in batches to the specific areas that they are researching at the moment, and upon reception, the receiver’s job is to go to Quotas’ website and confirm the receipt. For a postcrosser, this should be simple, right? All you need to do is signup and if they need to test your area, they will contact you.

What’s in it for you, you ask? Well, besides contributing to a more efficient postal service, Quotas also gives out small monthly rewards ($7-$20, depending on the amount of letters received). These can be given out using a number of options including Amazon vouchers, Paypal payments or given away to a number of charities.

You can read more about how it works at their website.

Show of hands: how many of you are fans of Postman Pat (and his black and white cat)?

We bet that for many postcrossers, this BBC series was a childhood staple and that song brings a lot of good memories!

But for those of you who don’t know it, Pat Clifton is a friendly country postman who delivers letters in the town of Greendale… unless he gets distracted by something going on the village, which he often does! He has a bright red van, and a black and white cat named Jess, in the original version.

The series is popular not only in the United Kingdom, but also around the world, so we might know him by one of his many names:

• Pieter Post (Dutch)
• Pat el cartero (Spanish)
• Postmand Per (Danish)
• Postbote Pat (German)
• Pošták Pat (Czech)
• Poštar Pat (Croatian)
• Carteiro Paulo (Portuguese)
• Pósturinn Páll (Icelandic)
• Postimies Pate (Finnish)
• Postmann Pat (Norwegian)
• Postino Pat (Italian)
• ポストマンパット (Japanese)
• Listonosz Pat (Polish)
• Postás Pat (Hungarian)
• Почтальон Пэт (Russian)

Click the links above to hear the series intro song in that language!
Know of any other versions? Do share! :)

Ana (also known as anagahan) is a member from Macedonia, a small country in the Balkans. She loves trains and all kinds of animals, and wishes she could adopt all stray cats and dogs in the world… don’t we all? :) Here’s what she had to say:

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

Well, it was sort of at random. One day, I totally accidentally spotted a blog link about postcard exchange, and all excited immediately clicked on it. By the time then my mailbox had been really neglected so this was like rekindling the old passion. I asked the blog owner if we could maybe trade postcards to which he kindly agreed, and I was full of joy. Then I anxiously started searching for more postcard blogs and on several ones I noticed people posting the question “Are you from postcrossing?” I got curious, looked it up and found it…didn’t register immediately, but once I did, you know the story, you get hooked in the blink of an eye :)

Oh, btw, the blog I mentioned above belongs to Rafal in Germany, another devoted postcrosser. So it is all his “fault” in a way ;-)

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

Anything that’s mail related, so I am into philately and also I’ve been into penpalling since the early 90's. (I am a lousy penpal unfortunately).

I enjoy reading, esp. unusual books. I love finding new bookstores, where apart from books I always put my radar on for postcards, without success usually. I love going to the theater or to interesting photography exhibitions. I admire all those moments people are able to capture through their lenses.

I love music, traveling, watching tennis matches, being outside in the sun and the quiet, playing with my two cats, my neighbor’s cats and dogs, trying out new kinds of coffee and chocolate…you know, those very small things which make life really beautiful. And another thing that relaxes me and I truly enjoy is updating my postcards blog: http://thewholeworldatyourhands.blogspot.com

My cats love my postcards too, esp. ones with cats…here, my older one really enjoyed them and even picked his favourite buddy…

and while he wasn’t looking, my younger cat came, and just as he steals away his food, he took all the other cat postcards too, saying “they are mine, period!”

Cats are tough to deal with! :P

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

Well this is my dear mailbox, which when full, is one of the rare things that can make me happy on a bad day…

Unfortunately in Macedonia the street mailboxes are not really operational so I post all my mail directly at the PO. There are around 10 Post Offices which I go to more or less, depending where in town I am, but this is the one I go to most often, being in my neighborhood.

Ok, now when it comes to 'organization’ I am really awful at that! I have both sorted and unsorted postcards. Here are the sorted ones by countries

And the unsorted ones…

huh, ouch…quite a lot. And DON’T ask me where I manage to keep all my letters and stamps too…I love calling my room a 'creative chaos’ :)

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

Maybe this sounds like a cliché, but I love all my postcards, and each of them has something which makes it special.

Pick any, and I’ll give you a reason why I love it.

Coz the postcard for me is not only the image itself, but much more the message on the back, the thoughtfulness, the kind heart-warming words and stories people who don’t really know you, want to share with you, the lengths they have gone to just to make you smile.

What are you passionate about?

Does the passion for trains count? It is a fascination I have inherited from my dad and I still remember my childhood days when he would set up these model trains all around the living room during the New Year holidays.

I LOVE Norway and the entire Northern Europe in general, and I am a huge animal lover and if I could I would probably adopt all the stray cats and dogs in the world. I just wish more to be done regarding animal rights and animal welfare.

Have you met any other members in real life?

Two actually, on separate occasions: Anasty from Russia and BraveJ from Serbia. The three of us still need to find a place to eat cheesecake together :)

Well well well… what have we here? Could it be… a music video featuring a ton of nostalgic postcards?! :D

We couldn’t resist sharing this catchy tune, which is the newest single from Sunderland’s band Frankie & The Heartstrings. Enjoy!

If you have tried to access Postcrossing in the last 2 days, you might have been surprised to see that the site was down. And not only for a brief moment, but for almost 30 hours! This was probably the longest time Postcrossing was unavailable (we hated it too!).

But the good news is… we are back!

Unfortunately, our hosting provider had a serious technical problem that not only affected us, but also many other large websites. While they are still finishing fixing the issue, the worse seems to be over for us.

But, more important now, is that no data was lost and everything is resuming to where it was just before this outage. We do apologize for this unexpected blackout and we will be looking into ways to better protect ourselves from similar technical problems in the future.

Happy Postcrossing, everyone!

PS: Have you noticed we have already passed the 7 million postcards mark?! :D