Postcrossing Blog

Dear postcrossers,

It’s a little crazy out there, so we wanted to take a minute to check on everyone. How are you doing? We hope you and your loved ones are all healthy and staying cozy at home as much as possible. It’s been a weird week around here, mostly worrying about friends and elderly relatives, and trying to keep calm. But, truth be told, it’s also been a week of finding purpose and hope in the little things.

This is in no small part due to the many postcrossers, who have written in to let us know how much receiving mail is cheering them up while self-isolating. Many of you are staying home with energetic little ones that you’re struggling to keep busy, others just need to feel connected with the world without the anxiety-inducing frenzy of social media. Whatever your situation might be, sending and receiving postcards seems to bring people a small measure of comfort in these troubled times, and we are thankful for that.

Now more than ever, we’re also thankful to the many mail carriers out there keeping people connected. Though most postal services are still working, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and ensuing flight suspensions have forced many postal operators to divert or cancel some of their mail routes. This is something we’ve always kept an eye on behind the scenes… but lately, this information has been updated so frequently that it was becoming overwhelming to keep an eye on all the mail suspensions, as well as replying to your queries about them. So we created a platform to make this information available to the community, and called it the Postal Monitor.

The idea is that we have a dedicated place in Postcrossing that keeps track of all the ongoing mail route suspensions around the world, so that we can add them to the project’s algorithm. This page relies on the excellent work that postcrosser Chie (aka Chieusa) has been doing on the forum for many years now, carefully putting together all this information with the help of reports from the community. So if you know of any updates, please report them on the forum, so that they can be included.

You’ll notice on the Postal Monitor that delivery to China has been re-established in many countries, so Postcrossing is back to giving out addresses in China in the countries that can send mail there.

A few of you have also suggested the implementation of a feature that would allow exchanging postcards with your own country exclusively. This is not an easy feature to implement in Postcrossing, which is designed to be global by definition. We’re giving the idea some thought, and checking whether it would be feasible.

Lastly, let’s take a deep breath, stay calm and find ways to support and be kind to each other throughout this. Remember that we’re all in it together. 🌈

This week, we decided to highlight a lovely online exhibition we heard about from postcrosser OrangeSunshine. In 1926, the Dutch Postal Museum in the Hague received a fascinating donation: a trunk of around 2,600 letters from the seventeenth century, some of them still unopened to this day… This obviously got our attention, so we had to take a look!

It seems that the trunk was originally owned by the postmaster and postmistress of the Hague at the time, Simon de Brienne and his wife, Marie Germain. Inside of it were all the letters that the post office could not deliver, either because of indecipherable or non-specific addresses, deceased recipients or people that moved… or because the recipient did not want to pay to receive the letter, as was the rule at the time. The chest was called the “piggybank” (spaarpotje), because they hoped to collect the money eventually if the letters were delivered one day!

The archive has recently been rediscovered and pored over by experts of all kinds, who have been hard at work preserving and digitising the collection, and you can see some of the fruits of their labor in the virtual exhibition!

One of my favourite aspects was learning about letterlocking (discussed more in room 4 of the exhibition). These intricately folded letters were intended to preserve the privacy of the letter-writers against the so-called “Black Chambers”. These where secret workers within the post office who would open, copy and reseal letters in order to spy upon the contents for the government! Other people used codes to write their private letters, making their contents unintelligible if you didn’t know the trick to deciphering them. You’d have to be careful to make sure that the coded nature of the letter wasn’t too obvious, or that would only draw suspicion…

We definitely recommend you take a look at the whole exhibition if you’re interested in this little piece of history. There’s tons of information there about who wrote letters and what they wrote about, and the materials and writing implements they used to do it, providing a fascinating glimpse into another era. If you check out the exhibition, we’d love to hear about what you think! What’s the most interesting thing in the collection from your point of view?

It’s been a while since we last had a giveaway on the blog, and this is an exciting one!

But first, a question: how do you carry your postcards around? Over the years, we’ve seen people make do with imperfect solutions to transport their postcards, sticking them along with stamps inside a book, re-using flimsy envelopes or paper bags or just haphazardly throwing them in their purses and praying for the best. We always cringe thinking of those fragile corners…

Maike and Wiebke (aka, the Papersisters) experienced these annoyances too, and decided to take action by creating their own Papertraveler in order to solve the recurring problem of how to safely transport postcards. The Papertraveler is a sturdy and smooth folder, made of two pockets with space for 50 postcards, plus 2 inserts for stamps, stickers or other small paper items. They’re crafted from a tear-proof and vegan material, sewn together, and wrapped in place by an elastic band.

Don’t they look neat? I’ve been using mine for a few months now, and can attest to its sturdiness. It’s just big enough for most normal sized postcards, but also compact, so it doesn’t take a lot of space in a bag. I keep mine stocked with plenty of stamps and some favorite postcards, just in case. 😊

And now, the part you’ve all been waiting for: Papersisters is offering two lucky postcrossers a Papertraveler, along with their handy Pentraveler companion plus a bunch of postcards!

For a chance to be one of these lucky winners, visit their website and then leave a comment below, telling us which postcard (or series of postcards) is your favorite. This won’t be an easy task, as there are many nice postcards there, with popular series featuring the Life of a Postcrosser, German themes, Personalities, Mail topics, or the Happy Postcrossing series…

So have a look through their website and let us know which ones are your favorites in the comments below — if you win, some of these will be included in your new Papertraveler! Don’t forget to check back here next Saturday for the winners (randomly picked by Paulo’s script, as always).

The day has come at last! The German postcrossers have been enthusiastically keeping track of their December postcards, and it is now time to reveal to the whole community how many postcards for a good cause were sent from Germany last year.

Ready to find out? Let’s do this!

Woohoo! This has been the best result yet in all the years we’ve been running the Cards for Literacy campaign with Deutsche Post! Our fleißig German postcrossers absolutely smashed last year’s record! 🎉 We’re proud beyond words, and thankful for each and every one of these postcards, whose corresponding donations are soon going to be put to a good use.

And naturally, if you’ve registered a postcard from Germany sent in December, you’ve also been a part of this campaign! Thank you for registering your postcards promptly, and contributing for this amazing result.

Last but not least, a huge thank you to Deutsche Post, for collaborating with Postcrossing and standing by their commitment to improve literacy in Germany, year after year. Bravo! 🎉

All that is left to do is for Paulo to run his magic script to choose the winners of this year’s prizes. If you’re in Germany and participated in this campaign, keep an eye on your email — you should receive a message soon, if you’ve won a prize. 😊

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!

Whether you live in a small town or a big city, festivals are usually one of the highlights of the year! Sometimes people gather to celebrate traditional crafts, special seasons, historical events or even religious festivities that are important to the community. What do the people in your region commemorate?

One festival that always makes our town buzz with excitement is the Mediterranean Diet Fair, in mid-September. Tavira is a representative community of this UNESCO recognized form of Intangible Cultural Heritage, and as such, every year a big party is thrown to showcase and celebrate it.

There are a lot of shows and workshops around the theme of the Mediterranean diet, which is not just about the food itself, but also encompasses all cultural aspects that go with. From music to performative arts, markets and seed banks, visits to cultural heritage sites, workshops, or activities for the little ones… there’s always something going on during the days over which the event takes place, so it’s definitely worth a visit!

What about your region? Which festivals are you looking forward to this year? Let’s write about these special events on the postcards we send out in March!