Postcrossing Blog

For many postcrossers, the travel mode is a welcome change and a great way to pursue our hobby on vacation or while on business trips. Sending postcards from a new country with that country’s postcard ID is always exciting!

But there are some places in the world where you can send your cards in travel mode from two different countries at the same time! Frank (aka xmyrxn) visited a very special place and shares his experience:

"I spent my summer holidays in the Netherlands and made a day trip to the town of Baarle. Indeed Baarle is not just one town but literally two towns in one. So when you enter the city there are two signs displaying Baarle-Nassau (Netherlands) and Baarle-Hertog (Belgium).

If you take a look at the map you find out that there are some Belgian areas within the Dutch territory. But it’s not just a Belgian exclave within the Netherlands, it’s a patchwork of different sized exclaves and enclaves! There are even spots of the Netherlands within a Belgian area which is surrounded by the Netherlands again! To make it just a bit more complicated, the border lines don’t stop at the front doors but cut houses so that your kitchen may be in Belgium and your living room in the Netherlands! Crazy, isn’t it?

When walking through the town you will cross the border several times and it may happen that you wonder in which municipality you actually are. For a better overview all house numbers show the flag of the actual country. And usually the house belongs to the country in which the entrance lies. You also can see the border demarcation on the ground.

But how has this strange situation arisen? Well, long story short: It all began in the dark Middle Ages. The border’s complexity results from numerous medieval treaties, agreements, land swaps and sales between the Lords of Breda and the Dukes of Brabant. Later on Breda became a possession of the House of Nassau, then Nassau-Oranje and finally the Netherlands while the parcels owned by the Dukes (in Flemish, the word Duke translates to “Hertog”) of Brabant went to the Duchy of Burgundy and finally became part of Belgium.

So how is the situation today? In Baarle-Nassau/Hertog you can find the best things from both countries: Cheese, stroopwafels and liquorice from the Netherlands as well as Belgian chocolates, frites and monastery beers.
And more: There’s a Dutch garbage truck in the streets and a Belgian as well, there are Dutch and Belgian schools (and some Dutch children go to the Belgian school and vice versa since the languages Dutch and Flemish are very similar). And there are Dutch and Belgian policemen, sharing a joint police office!

And yes, there are two postal systems!

A Belgian post office bpost can be found in Baarle-Hertog and a Dutch PostNL service desk in a stationery shop in Baarle-Nassau.
So I thought I could go into travel mode and send two postcards from the Netherlands. And then two from Belgium. And again two postcards from the Netherlands and finally two more from Belgium.
The only challenge was finding WIFI from both countries to proove Postcrossing that I am sending from these countries. I found free Dutch wifi in a really nice café in Baarle-Nassau and Belgian wifi only a few meters up the street in a pub in Baarle-Hertog. Koffie met Gebak in the Netherlands and a cool drink in Belgium. Could be worse!

After drawing the addresses I decided to try something crazy: Putting stamps of both countries on some of the postcards and collecting the postmarks of both post offices!

Thanks to the kind and helpful staff in both post offices I was able to receive the local handstamp postmarks! Usually nearly all mail of both countries is cancelled in big sorting centres and not postmarked locally anymore. So I think these postcards are very special and I’m a little bit proud to bring some nice mail items into Postcrossing. Four cards went to the USA, three to Russia, two to China and two to Ukraine.

And of course I sent one to myself ;-)"

Belgium might be known for chocolate, waffles and some famous comics (like Tintin, Lucky Luke or my personal favorite, Gaston Lagaffe!)… but from today onwards, it will also be known for some cute Postcrossing-themed stamps! They are out there in the world now, ready to make postcrossers happy both in Belgium and abroad!

We love the unique format of the stamp sheet, designed to look like a postcard itself! Featuring cheerful scenes of all the stages of Postcrossing, it really does a good job of showing what the hobby is all about. The text on the stamp sheet is written both in Dutch and French, the two most widely spoken languages in Belgium.

Naturally, also the cancellation mark is available in two languages!

Also, bpost is also issuing a special First Day Sheet, featuring the stamps in the front and some information about Postcrossing and this commemorative issue on the back.

A meetup was scheduled for today in Brussels to welcome in the new stamp, and we’re sure many postcrossers are heading to the philatelic boutique in Brussels (or more likely, to bpost’s online shop) to get themselves some. They can also be ordered at any post office in Belgium to then have them delivered to your address.

Wherever you are, we hope you’ll soon receive a postcard with one of these colorful stamps!

PS: Veerle (aka veke250) got some of these new stamps at the Skalafila pre-sale event, and took some pictures to show the community what they look like! 😍

We’ve been biting our tongues to share the news with you, and now it’s finally time: bpost will launch five new Postcrossing-themed stamps to celebrate Postcrossing’s 20th anniversary next year! 🎉 The stamps come in a special stamp sheet that looks like a postcard:

Isn’t that clever? 🤩 The stamp sheet was designed by Geert Wille and features the 2 main languages of the country. On the stamps, you can see the several steps of the journey of a postcard, from writing to arriving in someone’s hands across the world — like a “paper airplane”, flying around and connecting us all!

The stamp issue will be on sale from 16th June 2025 and we know there’s still a long time to go… but we can’t wait for next summer to see these stamps in the postcards sent from Belgium!

Here are the Little Mail Carriers again, to tell you all about the second part of their adventures in Belgium (here’s part one in Dinant, in case you missed it). This time, they went to Brussels – Europe’s comic art capital! Here is their report of the exciting trip:

Hi everyone! We were invited by Ghislaine and Sylvie (aka Sylor) to visit Brussels, the capital of Belgium… how could we pass the opportunity?!

We started the day with meeting the local mail carrier, or as they say around here, “Le facteur”. He’s really nice and brings Sylvie and Ghislaine lots of postcards.

Our first stop in Brussels was the Atomium, which we had only seen in photos and in stamps. It was built in 1958 for the World’s Fair (Expo 58) and has the shape of the cell of an iron crystal… only 165 billion times bigger! :D

On our way to the city, we noticed this statue of a policeman, whose leg is being held by a boy climbing out of the sewer, causing him to trip! What a fun sculpture to put in the middle of the square! Ghislaine told us it is called “the Vaartkapoen”, and it is inspired in “l’Agent 15” from comic strip “Quick & Flupke”. The boy holding his leg represents the rebel spirit which shakes the authority.

The city is filled with this kind of funny sculptures from Tom Frantzen, who describes them as “zwanze”: “a unique form of humour which he thinks is characterized by the absurdity and surrealism that stem from the mixture of languages so typical of Brussels”. Oh, look, there’s another one:

It’s the “Zinneke”, peeing on a street post! Zinneke means someone of mixed origins in Brussels dialect, and it symbolizes the mixture of people living in Brussels. Doesn’t he look cute?

Well, enough of culture! It’s time to have a break and try some local specialties! The chocolate and waffles were fantastic, but our favorite were the belgian frites! Yummy!

Aaaaah… so good! We noticed there were many brands of beer available – they really take it seriously here!

And some shopping, we arrived at the Grand Place, a Unesco World Heritage site. It’s very imposing and features the Brussel’s Town Hall, the Maison du Roi and several buildings from the Middle Ages named guildhalls.

Once a year, they make a huge flower carpet here in the Grand Place – we’ve seen it in photos, the whole square gets filled with colorful flowers… it’s really impressive!

Brussels lace is also very special… and expensive!

Belgian people have a great relation with la bande dessinée (comic art), so we had to meet some of their famous characters. Tintin, is probably the most popular of them all, so it was a big honor to shake his hand! Created by Hergé in 1929, he’s a reporter who goes on risky adventures around the world with his dog Snowy (or Milou, in French). Together, they always manage to save the day!

Another of our favorite BD heroes are the The Smurfs (les Schtroumpfs) by Peyo. Their language was a bit hard to learn, but I think we’ve smurfed it! :D

Oh look there… isn’t that the Manneken-Pis? They say the statue of the little man peeing is a must-see in Brussels, and represents the legend of the young boy who was awoken by a fire and proceeded to stamp it out by peeing on it! Now it’s just a funny fountain.

He was naked on the day we visited, but we were told he has a really nice wardrobe, with hundreds of costumes! On special days, they dress him up to celebrate a certain date or occasion.

That was a great visit! Sadly it was time to wave bye-bye to Sylvie and Ghislaine as they gently dropped us on the postbox… who knows where we’ll go next? :)

That was great! Thank you so much Ghislaine and Sylvie for this lovely report! Safe trips, little ones, see you soon!

After traveling around the world, the Little Mail Carriers just wanted a bit of a rest… They found the perfect place for it in Dinant, an idyllic city in Belgium gracefully posed on the margins of the Meuse.

Jo (aka juytters) was their host on this trip, and welcomed them with arms wide open! Here’s their report:

Salut everyone! Welcome to Dinant!

This charming Walloon city of around 14,000 inhabitants is squeezed between the Meuse river and the steep cliffs above it. Dinant’s impressive and strategic positioning along the narrow shore exposed it to a lot of battles and tragedies throughout the centuries.

But Dinant’s claim to fame is a happy one, something that brings joy to a lot of music lovers worldwide! Doesn’t ring a bell? Think Kenny G…

… no, not the man himself, but the saxophone he plays, which was invented by Dinant’s most famous citizen: Adolphe Sax! Mr. Sax was born in Dinant in 1814 and followed in the footsteps of his father as an instrument designer, making several improvements to the clarinet before finally inventing the saxophone in 1840.

The city is proud of its heritage and decorated the Charles de Gaulle bridge across the Meuse in colorful saxophones – one for each country in the EU. We zoomed past them in direction of another of Dinant’s highlights: the church of Notre-Dame of Dinant.

The original church was destroyed in 1227 when a big chunk of cliff fell down on it, and again in 1914 during the Battle of Dinant. But the resilient people of the city rebuilt the church to its former glory, using local limestone. Perched high on the cliff in the background, you can see the impressive Citadel fortress, overlooking the city.

A few days later, we got invited to a Postcrossing meetup in Gent, how exciting! We toured the town, bought lots of postcards and met some very nice postcrossers!

That was really lovely! But a trip to Belgium would not be complete without a detour to Brussels… so stay tuned for the next episode, we’ll tell you all about that! :)

À bientôt!

A big thank you to Jo for hosting the little guys and showing them around! Come back in a few days for the second part of the Little Mail Carrier’s adventures in Belgium! :)