Postcrossing Blog

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 Though she is no longer active in Postcrossing due to her busy work, we still keep in touch and send postcards and letters to each other from time to time.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? 😊

As lovers of all things snail-mail related, we have a soft spot for postcards featuring postal themes. So naturally, when this particular postcard crossed our paths some time ago, it was an instant favourite!

Isn’t it a lovely combination? At the time, we hadn’t realised this particular mailbox actually existed and is was being used daily to receive mail… until one day, someone sent us an email to bring it to our attention! That’s when we learned it belongs to Ellen’s (aka Elfje66) and is hanging outside her studio, in the Dutch village of Zweeloo.

Ellen is a paper artist, and we were happy to talk to her a little bit about her unusual mailbox, and her art works.

Where did the inspiration for your mailbox come from?

In the beginning of 2015 I started to join a 'Stamp my Journal’ project. I fell completely under the spell of making stamp-collages. Since my studio is called El’ Papel (as I am an absolute paper-lover even since I was a little child) I thought it would be great to decorate my mailbox with stamps too!

El’ is short for my first name: Ellen and the P from Papel is also the first character of my second name: Peeks. When I started designing and my own company I visited Spain frequently, so that was also a reason for choosing this name. Besides that, I found a lot of insertion in the Spanish culture.

Is it visible from the street? Did other people (or your mail carrier!) notice? What did they say?

Yes, it is visible from the street! When it was placed on the wall our mailman at that time didn’t respond at it at all! I was really disappointed! But he was a moody man… Now we have several mailman (man and woman) and they noticed as soon as we took the mailbox from the wall, as it needs to be redone a bit. Unfortunately most stamps aren’t printed with UV resistant ink :-( So some stamps lost a lot of their color.

What do you do, apart from creative mailboxes?

I graduated as graphical & typographical designer. But I work mostly as illustrator, designer of birth announcement cards and making merry paper maché objects (mostly fantasy animals). And I like to upcycle used materials. So stamps fit fairly good with this vision.

I have a website and shop, but unfortunately, the text on my website is in Dutch only… but there are a lot of pictures to take a look at! :-)

Here you also can find some of the Postcrossing cards I designed! Of course these are designs with… stamps. ;-)

How did you find out about Postcrossing?

I remember reading about it in the lovely magazine Flow, but forgot all about it. At some point I noticed a dear (post-)friend of mine showed a lot of foreign cards on her Facebook page. I asked her about this and she told and explained me about Postcrossing. She never should have done, as it is quite addictive ;-) In the meantime I join some Dutch Postcrossing groups on Facebook, big fun! We have meetings, what is very convivial. I now have some special post-friends spread across our little country!