Postcrossing Blog

Good news, everyone: Postcrossing has a shiny new forum! 🎉🎉🎉

Have you ever been to the forum? It’s a place for postcrossers to play games, arrange meetings, do swaps or just chat with each other, cementing the community bonds that tie us together. We love the idea of a forum… but for a long time now, we’d fallen out of love with the software we chose for it 15 years ago. It stopped being developed just a few years after we had installed it, and quickly started to show its age and limitations. The need for a separate login from Postcrossing itself was a hassle, and the lack of responsive design or support for languages that didn’t use Latin scripts were also issues that drove people away from it over the years… A technological upgrade that made the forum easier to use and in tune with the times was long overdue.

So over the past couple of years, we gave different softwares a go, finally settling on one that seemed to fit most of our requirements. We tested it first with a group of enthusiastic postcrossers, and then last month had a trial run with a larger group of active forum members, to understand how the forum would perform with more people on it. We were pleased with the results, and are therefore happy to announce that the new forum is finally live!

Some of the features of the new forum include the integrated login with your Postcrossing account, notifications when someone mentions you, group messages, aaaaall the emojis, easy upload of images, support for languages in different scripts, responsive design, wikis… 🥰 The list goes on and on!

Even if you’re not a “forum person”, we encourage you to login and take a look — maybe you’ll find a cozy place to chat with others in your language or geographical community, play a game of Tag with postcards of a certain topic, geek out about postcards or stamps (or maybe knitting or anime and manga!), talk about your favorite parts of Postcrossing or just generally hang out with other postcard lovers out there. Don’t be shy! It’s a fresh start, and everyone is welcome!

We hope you enjoy the new home for the Postcrossing community as much as we do — see you there! 👋

Hi everyone! Nicky again, with one of my reviews about books that feature mail!

Last time I wrote about books for the blog, I was enthusing over Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Documents in the Case, a mystery novel which relies almost totally on written evidence. This time, I’m talking about something completely different: 84 Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff.

84 Charing Cross Road is actually non-fiction: Helene Hanff was a writer and screenwriter from New York, who entered into a 20-year correspondence with a bookshop on Charing Cross Road, in London. She corresponded at first with a man named Frank Doel, but her funny letters and generous presents (such as food parcels containing food British people couldn’t obtain at the time due to rationing) quickly endeared her to the entire staff and to their families.

After Frank Doel’s death, she decided to publish some of their correspondence, and this was published as the book 84 Charing Cross Road — which is the book Helene (you can’t call her by her surname after reading this book) is best remembered for!

Reading the collection, I couldn’t help but quote bits aloud to my wife, almost every other page! Helene’s letters are warm and witty, and while Frank’s replies are rather more reserved, you can see an odd sort of friendship developing between them. Here’s one of the letters where she teases him for taking a while to find her a book:

“Dear Speed—You dizzy me, rushing Leigh Hunt and the Vulgate over here whizbang like that. You probably don’t realize it, but it’s hardly more than two years since I ordered them. You keep going at this rate you’re gonna give yourself a heart attack.”

It sounds like the plot of a romance, but Frank Doel was happily married, and… well, I’ll warn you all ahead of time: he and Helene never met. Throughout the letters she refers again and again to a visit that she never manages — at least not until after his sudden death and the closure of the shop where he worked.

My copy (from Sphere, published in 2010) does include The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, a book which collects Helene’s journal entries from her trip to London. It’s a satisfying follow-up if you’ve got attached to everyone via their correspondence in 84 Charing Cross Road, because you get to hear a little more from Nora (Frank’s wife), and Helene’s joy at finally reaching London is palpable.

I found it a really enjoyable read — though I almost found it difficult to believe that these people really existed and really sent these letters! There’s something incredibly sweet about their 20-year correspondence, short as it seems from this rather selective collection. It’s quite easy to dip in and out of, too, if you’re looking for a short/easy read. I loved it, and definitely recommend it!

I’m still taking suggestions for books about mail and mail-related topics, so do let me know any new ones you’ve thought of! I love non-fiction as well as fiction, and I’m totally open in terms of genre. The next post will probably be about Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal… but I’m notoriously capricious about reading, so I’m making no promises!

The writing prompts invite postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards’ messages every month. These are just suggestions though — if you already know what you want to write about, or the recipient gives you some pointers, that’s great too!

I’ve tried quite a few different cuisines in restaurants, but that’s usually a full meal. Snacks from other countries are a bit harder to come by, and I never know what to try! So… what would you recommend?

Personally, the best snack I found in my time living in Belgium was speculoos biscuits! Especially when I could persuade my wife to go to the bakery nice and early on a weekend and get freshly made biscuits for me! Luckily, we have them in the UK too, under the name of Biscoff… but I miss the fresh ones.

When I’m feeling homesick, though, I turn to Welsh cakes. They have a variety of names in Welsh: picau ar y maen, pice bach, cacennau cri or teisennau gradell, according to Wikipedia, and they may also be known as griddle cakes or bakestones within Wales, because they’re traditionally made on a bakestone, a type of griddle. They’re made with butter, flour, eggs and milk, usually contain currants, and are spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg.

My nanny (my dad’s mother) used to get them for me from the market, liberally dusted with sugar, and always deliciously light. Even better, though, is to eat them warm from the pan… You can try out a recipe here!

What about you? Do you have any favourite snacks? Can you get them in stores, or do you make them yourself? You can share your favourites in the postcards you send this month… but we’d love to hear about them in the comments as well! 😋

Awhile back, Carol (aka malozing) sent us some pictures of her dog Smokey in his new costume, and we couldn’t help but want to share them with all of you. Have a look!

How cute is he, dressed up as a mail carrier and holding a tiny parcel?! 😍 Awwww…

Obviously, he’s a fan of mail and keeps a close guard on Carol’s, to make sure no postcards are lost:

Have you or your pets ever dressed up as something postal-themed for Halloween (or Carnival)? If so, please do share!

Oooooof… World Postcard Day was such a rush! Everywhere we looked, people were posting and tweeting about their postal adventures, showing the pretty cards they were mailing, or giving the world a peak into their happy mailboxes. So many things happened that it took us a while to recover from all the excitement… but here we are now to tell you all about it!

First things first: remember the Stampex Talk we mentioned? It went brilliantly! We had a nice time chatting with Isobel Klempka from Stampex, postcrosser & philatelist Constanze, ABPS chairman Graham Winters, actor and postcrosser Sam West… as well as quite a few of you, who jumped in at the end to show your treasures! We oooh’d and aaah’d at all your stories and special postcards, and had a really good time. If you weren’t at the event, you can enjoy a recording of it below:

A lot more talks about stamps and collecting happened at Stampex between 1–3 October, and you can see an archive of those on the Auditorium of the event.

Meanwhile, lots of museums geared up to participate on World Postcard Day! Some showcased the postcards on their collections on social media, others helped spread the word, a few organized workshops or school actions. With the help of the Singapore Philatelic Museum, students in 40 primary schools throughout the country wrote messages of love and appreciation on postcards, to their friends, family and healthcare professionals. For many, this was the first time writing postcards!

Simultaneously in Croatia, Hrvatska Pošta helped 17,000 students in 500 primary schools throughout the country learn more about mail and postcards with the help of an educational video featuring their mascot, Marko Markica. The students were offered postcards, which they wrote during the class.

And still on the topic of schools, we lost count of the number of times the lesson plan was downloaded! Postcrosser Dovilė (aka VaDovi) challenged her former primary school teacher to participate in the event, which she promptly accepted. They used the lesson plan, postcards were printed, more classes joined and when the day came, 150 students at the Mažeikių Kalnėnų Progimnazija participated in the event, learning about mail, how and what to write on a postcard, where to stick the stamps, etc. Hurray!

Frank Roche (aka Postcardist) put together a special episode of his Postcardist podcast, where we hear about people’s plans for World Postcard Day all around the world. A few postcrossers chimed in to share their plans, and we especially enjoyed hearing about BonnieJeanne’s (aka postmuse) plans to make ravioli for dinner, because they’re often shaped like postage stamps — what a neat idea to celebrate a postal-themed day!

And last but not least, some of you have already started to receive your World Postcard Day badges on your profiles, as the postcards you sent on October 1st slowly arrive to their destinations. A grand total of 45453 postcards were sent on Postcrossing that day — one of the best days ever in the project!

By the time October 1st came to an end, we were overwhelmed with joy and gratitude for all the enthusiasm with which the Postcrossing community embraced the launch of the World Postcard Day. Thank you for spreading the word, sending postcards and helping put this day on the calendar! 💙 It was such a lovely highlight in this gloomy year.

We’re already buzzing with ideas for 2021… but we would love to hear your thoughts too! Got any cool suggestions or plans for next year’s World Postcard Day? Let us know in the comments!