Postcrossing Blog

When the Postcrossing project was launched 4 years ago, no one would guess that it could ever reach one million postcards. But it did, and, we have just reached 3 times that! What a milestone! Three million postcards! Three million connections! Three million smiles! We couldn’t be prouder of being part of this project.

And, this couldn’t be reached without every single member of Postcrossing, so a big thank you to you all for making it happen!

But, we know many of you are anxiously waiting to know who were the lucky members that exchanged this special postcard. So without further delays:

The postcard 3 million travelled from arjakos in Finland, to klemko in Slovenia! Congratulations to both for being part of such an important milestone in Postcrossing!

And, finally, congratulations Sara-Gandalf (from Slovenia!) – you are the lucky winner of our contest by being the first to guess correctly the countries involved on this unique postcard.

The winner of the contest, the sender and receiver of the postcard 3 million will receive aerogrammes packs kindly offered by the folks behind Int’l Girl Aerogrammes. If you aren’t one of the the lucky ones, be sure to check their website – their aerogrammes are designed with love, come in different languages and are printed in recyclable paper. Each aerogramme is a little piece of art that takes your message directly to those you love. Can you tell how much we love them?

Shall we start the countdown to the postcard 4 million? :)

If you didn’t notice yet, we are just a few thousand postcards away for reaching the postcard 3 million in Postcrossing!

Little over 6 months ago we could hardly believe we were celebrating 2 million Postcrossing postcards. And now, we are already speeding through another million – can you believe it?

As always, we like to celebrate this important milestones of the project with you, and this time is no exception. And a party without gifts is hardly a party so, we have something special to offer!

The lovely people behind Int’l Girl Aerogrammes have generously offered a few of their cool Aerogrammes to celebrate the 3,000,000 postcards. An Aerogramme is a letter that folds up into is own envelope – this is perfect for mail junkies such as ourselves, and theirs are specially cute. So what do you do to get one of these Aerogrammes packs? Read on.

All you have to do is leave a comment on this post with your best guess about from which country will the postcard 3 million be sent from and where it will go to (example: From Singapore to Brazil). Simple, right? The first to guess it correctly will be the winner of a pack of Int’l Girl Aerogrammes! Only one guess per person is allowed! We will announce the details of the lucky postcard when it gets registered.

Oh, and both the sender and receiver of that magic postcard 3 million will also receive Aerogramme packs, so be sure to keep your pen busy!

PS: If you hang out on the forum, be sure to check this related thread for more ways to celebrate this milestone!

Today we would like to share with you a love story. It’s one of the many wonderful stories we receive from our members about their use of Postcrossing.

Hi!

My name is Mircea and I want to tell you the story of the “relation” that I’ve created between my grandmother and Postcrossing. My grandmother (mamaia – in Romanian – which is her name in Postcrossing) is a 78 years old lady living in Timisoara. I wonder if she is the oldest or not. I’m just curious about that! She is a retired math teacher and loves postal services. For example one year ago, she has sent me a telegram (a really rare thing in this times) to wish me happy birthday.

I have made the account in her name because she is old and doesn’t know languages other that Romanian and also doesn’t know how to use a computer. I have asked every one to write her in Romanian. So I’ve created a pattern that can be copied and by the sender to include the sender name and location. In that way, my grandmother can read the postcards she has received. Every time she got a new one she makes a call to me and I registered the card. We live 600km apart, she in Timisoara in the western part of Romania and I in Focsani, which is in the eastern part.

I also chose, write and send her cards in the world. Some senders write something more in Romanian than I have asked them and that is a great feeling.

Love from Romania from KLMircea and Mamaia.

If you have an interesting use of Postcrossing, please share it with us!

Hello there! It took us a while to recover from the fabulous time we had in Helsinki, but here we are to tell you all about it :).

This big meetup was meticulously planned by Pooca, and exceptionally well executed. There were traditional Finnish games and yummy Finnish food, cute name tags, boat rides, visits to historical places, flea markets and an amusement park, lots and lots of presents and plenty of time to write and send postcards!

So, here’s what we did those 3 days, in detail:

On Friday, 28th September it was pre-meetup day. We met around 5pm near Aleksis Kivi statue, besides Helsinki’s train station. After the obligatory introductions (in attendance were a total of 48 postcrossers from Finland, Russia, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Netherlands and Portugal), the group went postcard shopping, guided by Pooca, who showed us the all best spots!

An hour later, we met at the square again, and then went off to a nearby park, where Pooca introduced the group to a curious traditional Finnish game called Mölkky. It goes like this: there are 12 wooden pins that people should try and knock over with another wooden pin, thrown from a distance. The pins are numbered 1–12, and the knocking over one pin gives the player the amount of points marked on the pin. If more than one pin is knocked over, the total number of pins is the score for that player’s round. After each throw, the pins are lifted up again in the exact location where they landed and the first one to reach exactly 50 points wins the game.

Mölkky was a lot of fun, with pins getting successively further apart and players looking for more creative ways to hit them :)

After the game, we sat down on the ground and wrote some postcards while eating delicious mini-stroopwaffles, brought from the Netherlands by dandilion.

On Saturday we met again at Aleksis Kivi statue. The main event of the day was a visit to Suomenlinna! Suomenlinna is a star fortress built on a group of islands just outside Helsinki. It was built to protect the country (at that time under Swedish rule) against a possible Russian invasion. About 900 people live in the islands, and the fortress is a Unesco world heritage site.

The weather was quite good, so we had a nice time walking on this fortress, admiring the fortifications and their cannons and the sea that stretches all the way to Tallin. Oh, and also enjoying the lovely presents and sweets that the group of Russian postcrossers, dandilion and Lotty distributed! :)

After Suomenlinna, we had some time to relax, visit some of the city monuments and fill our bellies with the delicacies in the market.

At 4pm we got back together for some early dinner. The buffet menu was delicious and in fact, our group was so big we had to split around in the two restaurant floors! :) When everybody was happy and full, we went to a coffee shop close by to write and sign all the postcards we sent! That was serious work and everybody helped counting the postcards, and re-checking for address correctness and total of signatures!

On Sunday 30th, the last day of the meetup, we visited the Valtteri flea market – a huge indoors flea market with all sorts of things! It was very intriguing yet so much fun to explore! After Valtteri, we walked to Linnanmäki, a nearby amusement park. And it was so great! We all went at once on the Panorama Tower, from where you could see a stunning 360 degrees view of Helsinki and then some of us went on Vuoristorata, a really cool and old wooden rollercoaster! We even met 'Rolle Pelle’, the mascot of Linnanmäki who accepted to take a picture with our group!

In the afternoon, we took a break in the local post office and finally mailed a grand total of 545 postcards!!! :) I’m sure we broke some record there, and made the post office people really happy!

That’s it! I am sure you can read my excitement from the number of smilies and exclamation marks I’ve used writing this post, but seriously, it was amazing. Helsinki is a very welcoming city, and there was so much generosity and friendliness in everybody we met, that I wish many more of you could have been there! Postcrossers sure are a special bunch. :)

Thank you Pooca for organizing such a brilliant meetup, and to everybody who participated and made it so special!! :)

PS – All the linked pictures are from the several meet up galleries, and you can see more of them on the following links:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirsi68/sets/72157622169707266/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirsi68/sets/72157622178384448/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirsi68/sets/72157622061513119/
http://s219.photobucket.com/albums/cc118/…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mahako/sets/72157622178405020/
http://picasaweb.google.com/Delenna.from.Finland…
http://s190.photobucket.com/albums/z27/dandilion1981/…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anjaaustel/sets/72157622088754235/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/91536860@N00/sets/72157622285729954/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42139194@N03/sets/72157622328027854/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nocas/sets/72157622208385341/

What have rubber ducks to do with postcards? Kirsi (Huppu68) thinks they go very well together. She lives in Helsinki (Finland), and in this week Postcrossing Spotlight she’s going to tell us who is 'Mauno’.

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

I read an article from the weekly magazine of Helsingin Sanomat newspaper and I registered to Postcrossing right away. I’ve always loved sending postcards and I was a bit sad, because people has sent their birthday and Christmas wishes by e-mail or text messages. When I got my first cards via Postcrossing I was hooked; this is a perfect site for me. I have also got a lot of good friends from all over the world and here in Finland too. We have lots of Postcrossing meetings here and I’m totally hooked on them too.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

I love photographing and I always have my camera with me everywhere I go. I also collect rubber ducks and I have about 120 different ones. Lately I have put these two hobbies together and started to take photos of my Postcrossing Duck called Mauno “Manu” Anselmi. He is quite famous already here in Finland; I took a photo of Manu with The Prime Minister of Finland :) Manu has his fan club in Facebook and I just started to write his own blog (only in Finnish though, sorry).

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

A photo of my nearest mailbox, where I mostly post my cards and a photo of my nearest post office.

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

Oh, this one is really difficult… I love almost all my received postcards and they all are like small gifts to me. I keep some of my favourite cards on our walls on boards and I’ll show a few photos of them. I have many collections of different themes and I have received thousands of cards for them via the official site and official forum of Postcrossing. I’m happy and thankful for every card I’ve received – they are all special for me.