Postcrossing Blog

Good news, everyone! We have received another exciting page from the travel diary of our little mail carriers, postman Paulo and postwoman Ana! They were just in Cape Coral, hosted by yvi-1, and loved every minute of it! Here’s a report of their days in sunny Florida.

We arrived in Cape Coral, Florida, USA on a mild March day and quickly understood what the attitude in paradise was all about. We headed directly for the pool but had to survive all sorts of terrifying wildlife before being able to relax. We grabbed a float and spent the afternoon enjoying the warm sun while gently bobbing in the cool pool water.

Then it was time for the Florida meetup held in Downtown Disney (Orlando) at Bongo’s Cuban Cafe. We were very excited to meet Orphan1965, chimoy, MarthicaAna, and 9teen87. Everyone enjoyed some traditional Cuban fare like mariquitas (fried plantains) and Ironbeer soft drink. We then went on a tour of Downtown Disney where we not only found great postcards in stores but were also able to take a picture with a Disney Princess and a dragon made out of Legos! We stopped by a Lego Paris wedding (was this some sort of foretelling?) and were eager to go on the balloon ride but it was closed.

At the end of the day, we stopped at the USPS mailbox located in Downtown Disney. We helped send the postcards signed at the meetup along their way. While getting ready to leave the Orlando area, we learned that Postcrossing.com had hit the 4 million postcard sent mark! It was very exciting. Unfortunately, yvi-1's local post office did not give her clearance to take pictures inside but we hope to have better luck at our next destination!

Not long ago, Postcrossing collaborated with UNICEF Poland and their “Cards full of life” anniversary by helping their cards travel all around the world. This has been so successful that they asked us to publish an open letter to thank all Postcrossers:

Dear Postcrossing Friends!

As you all know, our “Send a Card Full of Life” campaign started in November last year and immediately caught attention of people from all over the world. UNICEF cards quickly began to cross country borders, seas and oceans and carry our message to all people – sending a UNICEF card is not only a great way to stay in touch with your friends and loved ones, share emotions and thoughts, but most of all it is a simple and effective way to support our work for children.

Cards full of life success wouldn’t be possible without YOUR help and commitment. You gave our cards the first spin, helped us spread the word and send our cards to all continents. You posted photos of you and your cards on our website, commented our news on Cards Full of Life Facebook Fan Page and even contacted us on our email address to get more information on UNICEF and UNICEF cards. What started as a UNICEF Poland project, quickly became a worldwide game.

Your involvement and will to help is overwhelming and while our campaign continues, you still are with us, sending UNICEF cards every day.

We are very grateful for all that each one of you have done for UNICEF.

THANK YOU Postcrossing!

UNICEF Poland Team
Warsaw, 24.03.2010

Un-be-lie-va-ble! Four million smiles spread in postcards around the world! Even our little mail carriers are thrilled!

Well done to all postcrossers, each and every one of you contributed to this milestone. You’re amazing!

So, we know you’re all itching to know more about this super postcard, so, without further ado here it goes:

The four millionth postcard received through Postcrossing traveled from JS1980 in Czech Republic to scheppie in The Netherlands. Lovely postcard, isn’t it?

Nobody guessed the correct countries this time… so only the sender and the receiver will receive a coupon for a 60 postcard pack from MOO.

Remember that until April 15th, MOO is offering all postcrossers a 15% discount on the purchase of any pack of postcards (20 or 60), with the code POSTCROSSING15. Enjoy!

Now… shall we start counting to 5 million? :)

PS – thank you Yvi-1 for the cute picture with our wandering mail carriers!

Anya is a 22 year old snail mail enthusiast from St. Petersburg (Russia) who loves everything paranormal. She can thank her German pen pal for introducing her to Postcrossing.

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

Snail mailing has always been my passion – I’ve been pen-palling since the age of 13 and by that age I had already made a few great friends. Being in a Summer camp or having a vacation at a sea resort, I would send little notes, letters or postcards to friends (whether they loved it or not) and also to myself :). And, of course, I was ignoring sayings like “why send letters? it’s all left in the last century, emails are way faster!” Pfff, there’s no way to explain to others why a real card or a real letter is way better than a couple of typed lines on your computer screen.

For years, only my great friends would, once in a while, send me postcards from their vacations and I would look through them with delight. I don’t travel much and seeing other countries this way was beautiful. When a German pen pal mentioned Postcrossing in her letter, I immediately thought “Yes, that’s exactly what I need” and registered right away. Besides seeing the world through postcards, Postcrossing is an awesome way of interacting with many different people (I’m very social and enjoy meeting new people), different cultures, languages, thoughts, ideas, different types of handwriting. Most of all I adore the surprise – you never know who’ll send you a card, what it will be like, and from what place it’ll be coming from. Every postcard is unique. And, of course, there’s nothing finer than opening your mailbox after a tiring workday and finding a postcard which has traveled half the world to YOU with some friendly lines. I get something in the mail at least daily and it has become a great part of my life.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

Besides snail mail, I love learning foreign languages (I can speak 3 so far), reading (I’m such a bookworm!), anything related to Latin America, and psychology. But perhaps my biggest hobby is the paranormal – I’m interested in symbols, runes, astrology, tarot cards, spirits, etc. and am always willing to learn more. I wish I could call traveling my hobby too, but sadly I don’t have a chance to travel as much as I would like to.

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

Ugly mailboxes in my apartment building, where I get my mail :D

Me sending mail

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

Of course every postcard is unique for me, but here are a few I can easily call favorites.

A castle from Ireland – at which I was staring for a few minutes in delight; beautiful Copacabana beach (I LOVE Brasil and so far it’s the #1 country on my list to visit); a gorgeous B&W Lisboa view reminding me of something from the past; and, a cute sparkling romantic postcard received from Finland last year on St. Valentines day. The user wrote so many pleasant words that I was smiling from ear to ear. That card made my day and improved my bad mood quite a bit.

Jetske (in The Netherlands) kindly volunteered to introduce postman Paulo and postwoman Ana to Dutch delights. They were really happy to have such warm introduction to the country of tulips, clogs and vla, and wrote back to tell us their adventure! :)

Here we are, arriving in Jetske’s mailbox after traveling across Europe.
So this is where Jetske picks up her Postcrossing postcards and now she finds us here as well. How exciting!

Of course, since we are mail carriers we are curious to see what a Dutch mailbox looks like. We’ve learned there are red mailboxes and orange mailboxes. The red mailboxes are older. When the Dutch postal service changed to TNT Post, some years ago, they changed most of the mailboxes to new orange coloured ones. Don’t fall in the mailbox Paulo!

Today is a big day! We are going to our first Postcrossing meeting. The meeting is in Rotterdam, which is a drive of about 100 km to the North.
Here we are, in the car, on the Zeeland Bridge, which is the longest bridge in The Netherlands.

We arrived in Rotterdam and met in a cafe with Dandilion and JokeJacket where we enjoyed a delicious apple pie.

After coffee and apple pie we went to the best postcard shop of the country, De Egel. Here we also met the rest of the Postcrossers.
The woman in pink is a Postcrosser too. She had no idea there was a meeting that day and just came to the shop to buy postcards. When she saw us she asked if we were Postcrossers too and we all said yes! :D We invited her to stay with us for the rest of the day, and she did.

There are many cards here! We want to put them all in our little yellow basket!

Two hours later and with many new postcards, we travelled by tram to a restaurant called Bazar for postcard writing and lunch. Here we also met some other little travellers.

Time to go home but before we left we sent the postcards we wrote in the restaurant. Here they go, into a red mailbox:

Back to exploring mail services.
Here we are at the counter of a TNT Post office. The office is rather small and located inside a bookshop. Bigger post offices are closing down and now there are several smaller TNT Post counters in other shops instead.

In the Post office there’s a mailbag for bigger parcels that don’t fit in the mailbox. Luckily we are small and light, checking our weight on the scales, so we don’t need to travel in this bag!
On the picture in the bottom righ, you can see the “Boekenweekpostzegel”: a stamp in the shape of a small, real book, with real pages. The stamp was issued for a special event regarding books.

It’s our last day in The Netherlands already! But before we leave we enjoy this dish Jetske prepared for us. Poffertjes, they look like small and thick pancakes covered with lots of powdered sugar but they taste a bit different, nicer!

Bye! See you soon on our next destination!