Postcrossing Blog

Yvonne is a 64 y.o. grandmother in the U.S.A. and goes by FloridaGirl in Postcrossing. She has a soft spot for postcards with maps and nature, as you can easily see in her favourites. Here’s what she has to share with us.

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

I had saw that someone mentioned swapping postcards in another site. I went searching for where a site would be to do that. I found Postcrossing. What got me hooked was not just the official part of Postcrossing but also the Postcrossing forum when I discovered private swaps and saw that there were so many wonderful cards of places I’ve never seen. The people in the forum were so nice and I started to make friends. Also the cards spurred me to research places that were on the cards. I couldn’t just look at a photo and find it interesting, if it wasn’t clear to me what or where it was, I wanted to find out.
I do continue to do the official Postcrossing exchanges.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

I love maps, rocks, bookmarks and for years I made quilts but I had to stop quilting. That’s when Postcrossing started. I have maps from many places in the US and some other countries (road maps) and have 5 world Atlases.

I also have a collection of rocks that my parents, other family members or I have found; and, some that I bought, for example, petrified wood from Brasil.

My children have been giving me bookmarks for years, since I read so much. I’ve gotten beautiful bookmarks from other postcrossers.

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

That is me at my mailbox in front of my house.

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

My favorite of the animals are wild cats. This is a great card for the tenderness shown by the lions and the fact that I received it as a get well card from a postcrosser who I’ve gotten to know.

I’ve come to love the beauty of the Julian Alps in Slovenia. This just one that showns how beautiful they are.

The Japanese have a beautiful way of showing off their cherry trees.

This one shows olive trees with wild poppies blooming around them. It is one that I think is especially pretty.

Claudia is a creative Postcrosser from Italy, she even illustrates her own postcards. Read more about her in the following Spotlight interview!

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

I discovered Postcrossing reading a newspaper – I immediately thought that it would be a great chance for me to experience the world outside my window in Naples in a brand new way: not just by seeing pictures of new places but also by discovering aspects of people’s lives and cultures through senders’ words. I also loved the idea of establishing random contacts, as this allows the whole Postcrossing adventure to be free from any boundaries of age, color, culture or religion.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

I have many hobbies, but I should admit that I am not dedicated to all of them. I am dedicated in playing with my pets, reading books, watching movies and TV series, drawing, sun tanning and eating chocolate [I’m definitely too active in that :)] Then I sometimes love creative activities such as decoupage, scrapbooking, making beaded jewelry, and sewing bags for my niece or Halloween costumes for my pets. I would love to learn more about cooking and baking, especially foreign recipes.

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

My youngest cat Pepe hidden in the mailbox, ready to scare the mailman to death :)

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

I have received many beautiful postcards and I love them all for different reasons, but I do actually have my top three:

I generally love picturesque street view postcards, as they let me dream about how great it would be to walk those different corners of the earth.

This postcard litterally left me breathless, because when I was 4 or 5 years old my dad built a wooden model of this same ship for me! Now I know it’s the “Endevour”, the vessel in which Captain Cook first sighted New Zeland in 1769.

With this third postcard I want to thank every single postcrosser who accepted my invitation to swap one or more of my favourite postcards with me. It’s amazing to discover that there are people around the world ready to do their utmost to find a postcard you like, just to make you happy.

What is it your favorite part of the Postcrossing process?

Receiving a postcard is always a big joy for me, but what I love most is to make my own postcards. Ever since I joined Postcrossing, I created my handmade postcards, because I wanted to share more of myself than just the few lines you can write on a postcard…to give them a “personal touch”. So, inspired by my beloved pets (1 mini-pinscher dog, 4 cats and 4 parrots), sketch by sketch, my handdrawn characters – the “Nextlola’s Zoo” – materialized in front of me… hoping to bring a smile to the receivers’ faces. I was hugely surprised by the extent of appreciation from other postcrossers, and because of the enthusiastic support of some of them (very special to me), I decided to try to turn my hobby into a job by printing my own postcards and selling them on my website.

You can probably guess which countries have more members in Postcrossing just by looking at where you send or receive to/from, right? And we even have some statistics to show that too.

But, obviously not all countries have the same population! If we would take a sample of the same dimension in each country, which ones would contain more Postcrossers in it? Or in other words, in which ones is Postcrossing more popular?

We decided to do the math and share the results with you. We took into account the approximate population of each country, the number of users and came up with an interesting list.

And here’s how the ranking of the top 50 look like:

Surprise, surprise – Finland is at the very top. I bet you all guessed that one. But did you guessed all the following ones? Indeed, we had some surprises as well. Tiny Estonia with 1,3 million people manages to have plenty of Postcrossers. Same goes for Lithuania and even more with Macau!

Are there other statistics you would be curious to see here? Let us know!

PS: To calculate the data above we took into account only countries with more than 10 users and excluded countries which were too small or of which we did not have any relevant population data.

Meet Iris from Hong Kong. Teacher and student who loves theater, books and much more!

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

A few years ago, I was looking to start new hobbies, which ended up being old hobbies revisited! I recalled my love of writing letters as a child and started seeking for penpals. While I was browsing the penpal site Interpals, I came across a profile that mentioned Postcrossing and naturally, I was intrigued. I visited the site and in a blink of an eye, I was hooked. I collected a few postcards as a child and used them to decorate my room, but I didn’t take collecting seriously until I came across Postcrossing. To this day, I don’t consider myself a collector. The person who’s sending it and the message on the back can sometimes mean more than the card alone. Blank, pristine, unwritten cards, even if they’re pretty or rare, are great, but what makes them truly unique are the words written on them and the sentiment they express, or the moment in time they capture.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

One of the greatest loves in my life, apart from my obsession with snail mail, is theatre. I have worked in a backstage capacity since I was 13 years old. Again, it was an instant passion; I loved it from the first moment I stepped on my secondary school stage. I really love the idea of helping craft a piece of art without being seen. In a way, a play or a musical is like a postcard. It has a time and a place. The character of a postcard comes from the inscription, and the setting is in the picture. Both tell a story.

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

When I started postcrossing, I put my postcards in photo albums and stored them on the shelf.

But I realised I don’t like this, as I can’t touch or hold my postcards properly this way. I am just beginning to file and store them in a box.

I also have a CD stand by the side of my table which holds my most recently received postcards, which I haven’t filed away yet.

I am seriously considering investing in a proper rotating postcard rack, like the ones you find standing outside souvenir shops, so that I can browse through my cards at any time!

Here is my mailbox where I receive my mail and a photo of me posting some postcards.

Here is my local post office

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

This is the most difficult question to answer, since there are too many to choose from. I really love this Mona Lisa light switch cover card from Roelof in The Netherlands because it describes me to a T – classic with a touch of irreverence; serious and funny at the same time. I had such a good laugh when I received this card, and it still makes me smile.

Have you met any other members in real life?

We recently held the first ever Hong Kong Postcrossing meeting in August 2010, and eight of us met. It was really nice to meet other postcrossers in Hong Kong! Other postcrossers I have met are kasi0408 and Markus_from_Finland when I was in London in 2008. I was also very lucky to meet Ana and Paulo when they were visiting Hong Kong a few years ago!

Is there anything that you are passionate about?

I am passionate about education and literacy. I really believe that a formal education should not simply focus on forming the students’ ability to pass exams, but to equip them with life skills. I am a tertiary level teacher and I volunteer with the local chapter of Bring Me a Book, an international charity that focuses on making good books accessible to underprivileged children and encourages the strengthening of parent-child bonds through reading aloud. As a child, I read voraciously by myself and with my mother. I know this really helped form my character, as well as giving me a lifelong hobby and skill.

For someone that has ever participated in a Postcrossing meetup, he or she knows it’s always a very special event. From afar, no one would say that postcards could make such a strong connections between people. But as we know, they really do.

And that was very obvious this last weekend at the international Poscrossing meetup in the German city of Bielefeld. With an impressive participation of over 45 people – despite the very cold weather, it was a big success and everyone had a very special weekend meeting the faces behind postcards and the usernames they have become familiar with overtime. Smiles were plentiful and many are still claiming to have them, days after returning home.

There was something quite particular about this meetup – this time, everyone stayed at the same building for the whole weekend – some even called it a Postcrossing retreat. Whatever you call it, it was a fantastic time. With white landscapes everywhere, the popular Christmas markets and many many postcards and smiles – the hard part was actually to leave.

The participants came from many different countries: Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, UK, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and even from as far as Russia and Romania! And what’s more impressive, they all faced quite cold harsh weather to get there as large part of Europe has been covered in snow in the past weeks. Nonetheless, that was not a big problem for such a warming crowd which faced the below 0°C temperatures with a smile and headed to Bielefeld to be together and disprove the Bielefeld Conspiracy.

And because wherever there are Postcrossers, there are postcards, can you guess how many were written, signed and sent from this meetup? A grand total of 1250 postcards – can you believe that?! Bielefeld post must have had quite a surprise. And in our books that’s certainly a record!

But words don’t quite describe how great the spirit was on this meetup, so let’s try with some photos.

Haus Einschlingen, the place where everyone stayed during the 2 days.

Some serious postcard writing.

And some more…

The table with some of the postcards stacks to be signed.

The Christmas market visit and the popular glühwein.

And, of course, restocking on more postcards!

Who said you can’t play football when it’s snowing? (side note: the girls won)

The youngest, cutest and playful participant :).

Our postsnow-man.

And finally, a group photo.

We also want to use this opportunity to publicly thank nordbaer for organizing this meetup. It was fantastic and he did a great job putting it together.

Want to see more photos? You can find links for more at the forum thread of the meetup.