Postcrossing Blog

Some time ago, we received a nice email from Peter (aka p22earl), asking whether we’d be interested in knowing how he had been using Postcrossing to learn about music from all over the world from other postcrossers. Well, we love music and we love fun projects that members run using the site… so yes, please! :)

Here he is, explaining his postal/musical experiment:

I came across Postcrossing by chance at home one evening. I was reading about Bookcrossing which I have done a bit of in the past when I stumbled upon Postcrossing. As a lover of snail mail I was instantly hooked on the idea and signed up to begin sending postcards.

I read some other users accounts and got a sense of how to set out my own ‘who i am and what i want’ profile. I thought about the kinds of postcards I’d like to receive and additionally I considered what I would like to perhaps learn from fellow Postcrossers. I have quite a lot of music on CD and cassette tapes. I don’t collect vinyl. My radio is hardly ever off. I decided that I really wanted to learn more about music from other parts of the world and that Postcrossing would be a good way to help me learn about it.

My profile reads… ‘I like to learn about different types of music from all over the world. Please tell me about your favourite music from your home country / city / town.’ And on postcards I sent out across the skies I wrote words to a similar affect. Often I would tell people what I was listening to that day or about my favourite bands (Breed 77, Beach House Joanna Gruesome, etcetera…).

The responses I had from Postcrossers did not disappoint. There were those who wrote about musical instruments they play, or what genre of music they enjoy. One from Netherlands wrote about how they could hear children going from door to door singing songs and collecting candy as part of traditional Saint Martin’s Day celebrations (11 November). And I started to learn as I had hoped about lots of genres of music I had never heard of (or considered) such as Medieval Rock (Saltatio Mortis), Mandopop (JJ Lin), Slovakian punk (Horkýže Slíže), Daina Baltic Folk (Alina Orlova), Russian Folk (Пелагея).

And as time went on I started to think about what I would do with my new found knowledge. Eventually I decided that I would make a mixtape of various Postcrossers’ favourites. Once I reached 100 postcards I selected one from each postcrosser who wrote to me or replied about music. I chose to not include bands whose music is familiar to me such as Abba or the Bee Gees – not just because I don’t like them but my aim with the project was to discover music that was new to me. And importantly I wanted that music to be an international portrait of Postcrossing members’ diverse tastes.

And as I used to do so much in my teens, I taped the music onto cassette. This is the only physical copy of the postcrossing playlist. I painted it with a small (inaccurate) map of the world on one side and on the reverse is a postcard including a real stamp. The mixtape exists as two playlists on Spotify. One side (playlist 1) featuring music from postcards I received and the second side (playlist 2) featuring songs from replies to postcards I sent. Side 1 plays 47 minutes, and side 2 runs for 43 minutes.

You can find the Postcrossing playlists on Spotify by searching ‘Postcrossing Mixtape’. My Spotify username is p22earl.

I hope you enjoy learning about some new music from around the world too. Let me know your favourite song from the playlist. And if you send me a postcard make sure to tell me about the music from your home country / city / town.

Happy Postcrossing

Peace, post & music

Peter

PS – Since not everyone has access to Spotify, here’s the track listing for Peter’s mixtape:

Side 1:

Side 2:

PPS – Notice something inside Peter’s mailbox on the first picture? Here’s a better photo:

Yup! Peter has little people who live inside his mailbox and take care of all the mail! He says he put them there to surprise his wife for her birthday, and they ended up staying… How nice is that? 😀

As some of you can probably tell by his username, Eels (aka Qi) is a music fan. He also likes Wes Anderson's movies… and surprisingly, we share a favourite book from a Portuguese author, which he first learned about through Postcrossing! Come discover which, on his spotlight interview!

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

I used to send postcards to my close friends and even myself during my travels, and I happened to know Postcrossing when I was browsing the website Douban many years ago. There’s a Postcrossing group there and I was fascinated by the amazing project after I read its brief introduction, so I immediately opened an account to start my Postcrossing journey. :)

Since then, I’ve been active also in the forum and ‘met’ lots of nice friends these years. The most amazing thing is I have a penpal who used to be a postcrosser. Though she is no longer active in Postcrossing due to her busy work, we still keep in touch and send postcards and letters to each other from time to time. Without Postcrossing, I wouldn’t have such a important far-away friend, even though I never saw her.

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

It’s really hard to choose only one favorite card from my received cards…

I am a big fan of James Dean and I really love all his movies, so I started to collect postcards of him. Till now I have over 100 James Dean postcards.

I also love Japanese Gotochi cards and started to collect them… though collecting them all seems like an impossible task. A few weeks ago I received my favorite Gotochi featuring Momotaro — what a lovely card!

And here’s a card with Fernando Pessoa, a famous Portuguese poet. I got to know him through a Postcrossing friend’s introduction, and I’ve enjoyed discovering his work. I have finished reading the Chinese version of 'The book of disquiet’ and I’m reading the English version now.

Finally a postcard of the Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk, a UNESCO site in Czech Republic with beautiful architecture. I want to visit it if I have the chance!

What is it your favorite part of the Postcrossing process?

To read each postcrossers’ profile, choose the perfect card (at least I think), choose stamps, decorate and write on it. Also upload the picture before I send out the card. All these processes are interesting and I enjoy them.

I love receiving surprises as well, not just the postcard but also the message on the back side. The magic charm of Postcrossing is you never know what will arrive to you everyday, and I love sending and receiving surprises. :)

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

This is my local post office…

… and the postbox from which my cards are usually sent:

Here is my mailbox, where postcards arrive:

After registering, they get put in a box, waiting to be sorted…

… and this is the shelf where they end up, after being sorted and stored.

Have you met any other members in real life?

Yes! I attended a small Postcrossing meetup in Shanghai two years ago:

That’s me on the front right side, and my wife Yaya on the front left!

Had I joined Postcrossing earlier, I might have had the chance to see Paulo and Ana, as they were in a meetup in Shanghai in 2008.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

I really love listening music in my daily life, and started to collect vinyl records about a year ago. I am enthusiastic about watching movies — my favorite director is Wes Anderson. I also love jogging and want to finish a marathon one day in the future. Besides that, I started to learn yoga few months ago, a quite interesting exercise which makes me feel peaceful and relaxed.

Postcrossing widened my eyes, there are sooooo many wonderful places/countries I want to visit! My wife and I have visited several European countries: France, Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands or Spain. And Iceland is the place I most want to visit in the future.

We know many Postcrossers take their yearly break in the upcoming weeks to relax or explore new places.

So here’s your yearly reminder: if you know you’ll be away from your home or school address for a while, we recommend that you switch your account to inactive a few weeks in advance — you can do that easily just by editing your account settings. This will tell Postcrossing not to give your address to any other members while you are away. You can still send some postcards if you’d like, but you won’t be sent any until you’re ready to receive them.

When you’re back, all you need to do is to switch your account back to active and you’ll be in business again! Rest assured, all your due postcards will then be sent your way.

Oh, and don’t forget to get some local postcards, so you can share your holiday memories and recommendations on the cards you send!

Enjoy your holidays! :)

Late last year, Deutsche Post and Berlin’s Museum for Communications launched a video competition themed “Why do we still write letters?”, where people could post videos explaining the charm of written mail. They got over 400 video submissions, which you can see on their YouTube channel. They’re sweet, touching stories of why we still put pen to paper to write to to each other.

We only heard about the competition once it was over, but were happily surprised to find a video about Postcrossing among the entries! Have a look:

Johannes (aka joze-post) made this charming video, which does a great job of portraying the randomness of Postcrossing. He didn’t win the competition… but he stole our hearts with the cheerful music and fun details about some of the postcards. Well done Johannes! :)

Today, we’re happy to welcome Austria into the club of countries that have issued Postcrossing-themed stamps! Here’s what their shiny new stamp looks like:

The stamp was designed by Robert Sabolovic and depicts a stylised “wall of postcards”, with the word POSTCROSSING in front of it, painted in the Austrian flag colours.

To celebrate the stamp launch, a meetup was held on Hirtenberg’s Kulturehaus today, where postcrossers came together to write and send postcards with the new stamp and special first-day cancellation mark.

Photo by Eva (aka Meixi)

Mr. Sabolovic, who designed the stamp, was also in attendance, and autographed postcards and stamps.

Photos by Anita (aka honeybee)

Photo by Sabine (aka turtles)

In the end, a wonderful time was had by all, and hundreds of postcards were carefully stamped, postmarked and put on their way. Maybe one of them will land on your mailbox soon? 😊