Postcrossing Blog

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!

You might have noticed we are already in countdown mode for the postcard number 4 million in Postcrossing. That’s right, 4,000,000 postcards! Can you believe it?! (we’re still having some trouble wrapping our heads around that number ourselves…)

For those of you who’ve joined Postcrossing recently, you might want to know that Postcrossing reached the first million of received postcards in April 2008 – that was only 3 years after its very start. That date made us immensely proud of Postcrossing and of all our members. What we didn’t know back then was that it was only the beginning!

In February 2009 – less than a year later – we reached the 2 million and by September we were already celebrating the 3rd. And now, 6 months later, we are preparing for the postcard 4 million!

We like to celebrate these milestones with all Postcrossers and so, continuing in what has become a Postcrossing tradition, ladies and gentlemen, we’re pleased to announce the forth edition of the “Guess the Countries” contest!

All you need to do is to leave a comment on this post with your guess about which country the postcard 4 million will be sent from, and where it will go to (example: From Tanzania to Iceland). It’s really simple! The first to guess it correctly will be declared the winner, but only one guess per person is allowed! We will announce the details of the lucky postcard when it gets registered.

But… if there are winners, there must be prizes, right? I’m glad you asked, because there are awesome prizes for both the correct guesser and the sender and receiver of the lucky postcards!

Our friends at MOO (makers of all things printed and pretty) have agreed to partner with Postcrossing and offer 3 packs of 60 postcards for the winners!! How great is that?

With MOO, every single postcard you print can be different, and have your own pictures in it. If you’re not a keen photographer, don’t worry! They have an incredible selection of ready-made packs that you can choose from.

Also, 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. Aren’t they sweet?

So, take a guess in the comments, and write/register lots of postcards. Let’s get the party started! :)

(top image by leo reynolds, flickr)

At Postcrossing HQ we are always looking for ways to do good through postcards. Today we are happy to share with you a simple but very powerful way to ignite big smiles.

Hearts in Unity is an organization working towards improving the life of orphan and at-risk children in Tanzania. Through several projects, they aim to feed, clothe and give access to education to Tanzanian children as well as tell the world more about this African country, one of the worlds’ poorest with over 2 million orphans.

One of Hearts in Unity projects is Messages from the Heart which consists in bringing heart-felt messages of greetings, friendship and encouragement to Tanzanian children. And what better medium for that than a postcard?

The Hearts in Unity representatives in Tanzania hand-delivers those messages to those who need them most, many in remote villages where there isn’t even postal delivery services. This is the only way for some of those children to have contact with postcards and receive greetings from somewhere else in the world.

We believe this is a great match for Postcrossers, who understand what a postcard can do to lift our spirits and bring some encouragement.

If you wish to participate in this cause, this is the address where you can send postcards to:

Hearts in Unity
P.O. Box 6497
Moshi, Kilimanjaro
TANZANIA

For sending anything other than postcards such as parcels, donations or enquiries, please use this address instead:

Hearts in Unity
“Messages from the Heart”  
P.O. Box 41
Germantown, WI  53022
USA

You can use this address as well if you are in U.S.A. and wish to save some postage. The correspondence will be forwarded to Hearts Tanzanian representatives as well.

If you need ideas about what to write, or even how to write a message in Swahili, check Messages from the heart project page.

Please note, that Tanzanian children don’t have a way to send postcards back – an international stamp can cost more than half of a family’s average daily wage in Tanzania. However, Hearts in Unity also has a penpal project. In fact, they have many other projects, so be sure to check their website: http://www.heartsinunity.org/.

Valerie from Paris (but currently in New Zealand) learned about Postcrossing from a penpal site. She is 24 and enjoys riding horses and photography.

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

I had been penpalling for a long time and heard about postcrossing on a penpal site. I was moving out of my parents’ place in only a couple of weeks and I thought it was a good idea to get some nice mail in my own new private mailbox. Since then, thousands of postcards and many good friends later, I’m totally addicted. :D

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

Travelling, taking pictures, horse riding (all 3 at the same time is the best)!

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

My mailbox is old and ugly; that’s why I need colorful and nice postcards to fill it! My postoffice is not really any better, but I get to post my mail in the bright yellow boxes! I’ve never seen my post(wo)men, so sorry no pictures. I’m not home during the time the mail is delivered. I keep all of my regular size postcards in albums and all oversizes in a big box not counting the ones that are on my walls. I have no idea how many I have.

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

It’s hard to choose one card and usually what makes me like a card is more the message on the back than the picture in front! But I do have one that I find special—one of my first official received from Finland. I’ve said in my profile that I like handmade cards and this girl (14 y/o at the time) sent me a lovely watercolor card she did from the “fox lake” that is near her place. All cards received from my forum friends are so special to me too!