Postcrossing Blog

Hi everyone! Some time ago, the Little Mail Carriers visited the third-largest island in the world: Borneo (also known as Kalimantan in Indonesian language)! It is divided among three countries (Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei) and sits right on the Equator, so the weather is always warm there. They were really curious to start exploring, so they joined Norita (aka noritaa) for some adventures!

On an early Sunday morning, our host woke us up to go to Siring’s recreational park, located at the heart of the capital of South Kalimantan, Banjarmasin city. This park was built on the shores of the river Siring, thus the name. There used to be a floating market at the river, but when we visited it was temporarily closed due to the pandemic. We took some photos with the river view and also in front of one floating food stall we found at the bank river. The stall was closed as it was still early.

We bought tickets to ride a “Klotok (a motorized boat) along the river. The round trip on the boat lasted about 30 minutes.

Right in front of the dock where we got off, stood the city’s landmarks, a 6.5 meters high (21 ft) statue of a bekantan (Proboscis monkey) which is a native primate of this island. Bekantan are a highly arboreal species and they live in groups consisting of one male and several females and their babies. Since there were quite many people who took pictures in front of the statue, we had to wait for a while.

We also stopped by the miniature of Banjar traditional house called “Bubungan Tinggi”. In the old kingdom time, this house was the core building in a complex of a palace where the king and his family lived. The name “Bubungan Tinggi” refers to its sharp and high roof (45 degrees steep).

We were hungry and our host took us to try a dish from the local cuisine, a rice noodle chicken soup called “Soto Banjar". Soto is a popular Indonesian chicken soup that can be easily found anywhere in the country, from a street stall to an upscale restaurant. There are many different soto in Indonesia, some of them are named based on the region where they are originated, including “Soto Banjar” as Banjar is not only the name of our ethnic group but also the short form of “Banjarmasin” (the name of our city).

Soto Banjar is made from a combination of spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and lemongrass. There was a chicken foot in our soup given for free, in some places you have to pay extra for them. It is served with compressed rice cake called “Lontong" and chicken satay.

After we finished eating we strolled at the river bank again and surprisingly found an antique stall, where old coins, banknotes and stamps were sold. We looked at some of them, and took a picture of us with a set of stamps from 1965. The stamps featured the founding father of Indonesia, Soekarno. Soekarno was a leader of Indonesia’s nationalist movement during the colonial period. Together with Mohammad Hatta, he proclaimed Indonesian independence day on August 17, 1945. He then was appointed as the first president and served from 1945 to 1967.

We continued strolling along and passed by a graffiti of Banjar traditional costumes and traditional house just like the one that we saw before. Traditional costumes for men are long-sleeved vest decorated with motifs, long pants in similar color and a cloth with similar pattern wrapped around the waist. For the head, they wear a headband that has one of edges is higher than the others. Women wear a top called “Baju Kurung Basisit” and sarong. The top is called basisit, and it has straps (or “sisit” in Banjarese) at the neck and hand parts.

The sun was already high but before heading back home we went to “Kampung Sasirangan” or Sasirangan village which is a center for sasirangan production. Sasirangan is a typical traditional fabric of Banjar ethnic group that are used as headbands, belts for men, as well as scarves, hoods and also a traditional tank top for women. Lately Sasirangan has been developed into an industrial product in South Kalimantan. Sasirangan is derived from the banjar word “sirang" or “menyirang" that means “to stitch together". The method in making sasirangan is a bit similar to that in Javanese batik.

The next day we accompanied our host sending her mails to the post office. Here in this city, they do not use mailboxes anymore so all mails have to be dropped at the post office. Incoming mails are delivered directly to the door of the recipients.

It was a very hot day so once we were home our host treated us with rambutan fruit. “Rambut" means hair, and this tropical fruit has hairlike spines on its outer skin. Rambutan is a garden fruit tree and in South Borneo it is common to find them either in the back yard of the front yard of a house. The fruit are usually sold fresh but since they have a short shelf life they also made and sold as pickle.

Thank you Norita, for this sweet visit to Banjarmasin! So many new things to learn about and explore… I’m sure we’ll be dreaming of monkeys, rambutan and colorful sasirangan for some time.

With their passports in hand, the little ones are already off on fresh adventures – where they’ll pop up is anyone’s guess!

In the spirit of mail sometimes taking the scenic route to their destinations, this blog post is a little late… but as they say, better late than never! It’s been a while since the Little Mail Carriers made a visit to Patricia (Angelthecat) in Germany, which they did in time for World Postcard Day in 2021. We’ve been keeping this delightful blog post from you since then, so let’s waste no more time and let them tell you all about their adventures and the many postcrossers they met along the way…

Hello all, this time we travelled to Franconia. Patricia (aka Angelthecat) hosted us for some time and showed us some really wonderful places together with Manuela (Manu86), Antje (KiwiAngie), Verena (vvsmurfy) and Tanja (Gaiasduhter).

We started at Herzogenaurach.

The town with approximately 24,000 inhabitants is situated about 25 kilometers north-west of Nuremberg and is especially known in the world of sports. Herzogenaurach is for example the home of Adidas, one of the leading sportsware producers worldwide. The history of manufacturing sports’ shoes started in the 1920s. In 1924, the first firm was registered and named “Dassler Schuhfabrik”. When the brothers Dassler split up after WWII, Adolf Dassler established his firm today known as “Adidas AG” in 1949. The firm’s name is an acronym made of the Adolf Dassler’s nickname “Adi” and the first three letters of his last name. The Adidas soccer shoes became worldwide attention with the “wonder of Bern”, when the German national soccer team wore shoes with three stripes and innovative soccer cleats when winning the World Cup in 1954.

After a long city stroll, we were really hungry in the evening, and therefore got invited to try a typical dish of the region: The Aischkarpfen (carp from the river Aisch). Very yummy!

Of course, we also took some time to write some postcards and prepare for World Postcard Day!

The next day it continued: On October 2nd, 2021, there was a Postcrossing meet-up in Ansbach. It was wonderful again.

The name “Ansbach” has its origin probably in an inflow of the river Rezat, called “Onoldsbach”. In the year 748, a monastery was founded in its estuary, the roots of the later town Ansbach. It was mentioned on a document in 1221 for the very first time. This means we got here on time for its 800th jubilee – great!

When walking through the town, we noticed that there are also other funny statues, like this man with a suitcase:

And we took a look at the Saint Gumbertus church in Ansbach:

We also highly recommend visiting the castle garden in Ansbach. It’s beautiful!

And of course, we helped with writing postcards again afterwards…

After a long day, we needed a good rest, but the next week we went to explore Nuremberg, the home of Angelthecat and Gaiasduhter! First of all, we climbed the castle hill, and were able to enjoy the beautiful view over the city.

It’s not very clear when Nuremberg was founded. It was mentioned the first time in a document called the “Sigena Urkunde” issued by emperor Henry III in 1050. Probably there were some smaller settlements as well as a castle. This castle became an imperial seat and was soon important for the whole empire of that time. In 1219, Nuremberg was acknowledged as a free imperial city by Frederick II. Today, Nuremberg is known for toys, gingerbread and the world famous “Christkindlesmarkt” (Christchild’s Fair). Nuremberg was also the stronghold of manufacturing pencils!

We also discovered something very cool, and exactly the right size for us: a model of the Nuremberg castle and the city area of that time!

Of course, we also visited the famous Nuremberg painter, graphic artist, mathematician and art theorist Albrecht Dürer. Maybe you even already received a postcard with one of his works? World famous are the “Young Hare” or the “Praying Hands”.

We even ran into him in person (sort of)…

After that, we visited the main market square (Hauptmarkt). The “Frauenkirche” (Church of our Lady) on the main market square was built by emperor Charles in the time of 1352 to 1362. It is known internationally for its so called “Männleinlaufen” (a mechanical clock that commemorates the Golden Bull of 1356). Every day at noon, 7 electors come from the right door, go towards the emperor, and turn to him. The figure of the emperor welcomes them with his scepter—it’s a bit complicated to explain, but wonderful to see: there’s a video here on Youtube that lets you catch a glimpse!).

We also visited the Beautiful Fountain. It was built in 1396 and is situated at the main market next to the town’s hall. Its height is about 19 meters. It is known for its story of the brass ring:

“Master Kuhn, who built the lattice fence around the fountain, had a daughter named Margret, who was adored by the apprentice. As the Master did not want to give his child to a poor man, he prohibited the relationship and threw him out. It is said that Kuhn told the apprentice that he would not get his daughter the same way the young man wouldn’t be able to make rings turning around at the fountain’s lattice fence. When the Master travelled, the apprentice secretly made the rings, to prove his skills. Then he cut the rings and put them to the lattice and hammered and filed until the seams could not be seen anymore. Then he left the town and never came back. When Kuhn was back home, he recognized that he was too strict. But it was too late, and Margret was in tears. One of the rings is seen as a lucky charm. The legend tells that those who touch and turn the ring, will be blessed with children. Most of the tourists think that the ring made of brass is the lucky charm, but lot of people from Nuremberg think that the “real ring” is the one made of iron, and therefore is the lucky charm.”

Before we go on with our trip, we have to relax a bit at the “Museumsbrücke” (museum’s bridge) with view to the Heilig-Geist-Spital (Holy Spirit Hospital):

The “Heilig-Geist-Spital”, often simply called “HeiGei” by Nuremberg locals, was used to care for the sick and old of the imperial city. The hospital was donated by the richest citizen of that time, Konrad Gross. Still today it is used as a retirement home. The Heilig-Geist-Spital is also the place where the imperial insignia were kept in Nuremberg from 1424 to 1796.

Before we went back to our host’s home, we enjoyed the view over the city again, this time towards the castle:

We really enjoyed the time in Nuremberg very much and in case we will get the chance to come here again, we definitely want to eat gingerbread. They are simply a must to eat at Christmas time. Maybe together with our new friends? But for now, we’re on our way once more…

Thank you for hosting the Little Mail Carriers, Patricia, and thanks also to all the postcrossers who spent time with them for welcoming them so warmly!

Since their time in Franconia, they’ve had several other adventures—but that’s a story for another day…

Some months ago, we received a message from Janna (aka revode) who told us about her visit to a wonderful postcard exhibition at the Porter County Museum in Indiana! Sadly, we couldn’t go there ourselves… but the cheeky Little Mail Carriers were happy to jump in and volunteer for a guided tour. 😍 Here is the report from their latest adventure!

Hello everyone! We have arrived at the Porter County Museum in Valparaiso, Indiana! We heard that the PoCo Muse has an exhibit with hundreds of postcards on display until January 7, 2024 so we decided to come check it out!

The Porter County Museum was founded in 1916 and has over 20,000 objects in their collection related to the history and culture of Porter County, Indiana. With so many objects in the collection they rotate through what is on display frequently in order to tell as many stories as possible. When we visited, the Robert Cain Gallery was featuring art from the museum’s collection, the Eunice Slagle Gallery had the exhibit “Connections: Take a Closer Look”, and the Montague/Urshel Gallery featured (the exhibit that we traveled here for) “Ever Yours: Postcards from the Golden Age”.

Before searching out the postcards, we explored the Robert Cain Gallery, admiring the work of many Porter County artists who worked to capture scenes from the area. The art in the Cain Gallery rotates out every three months, so that there are always new things to see.

Walking through the museum to get to the postcards, we had to journey through the “Connections” exhibit where seemingly different objects from the museum’s collection are paired together with a variety of connections between them. This concept allows for a wide range of objects to be on display. Did you know that there has been a Popcorn Festival in Valparaiso every September since 1979?

One of the first objects we came across in “Connections” was just our size! It is a scale model of the Maxwell/Remster Dairy Barn which was made by John Remster Sr. for his son John Remster Jr. in the 1950s. The barn can be opened up and played with and has been played with by every generation of the Remster family since its creation! Unfortunately, the barn it is modeled after no longer exists, though the milk house that was connected still stands.

These two pieces are connected by being not the final product. The linocut block (right) shows the artist, Hazel Hannell’s home that was in Furnessville, IN. No prints made from this block are known to exist, though you never know what might be in someone’s attic. The “Brenda Starr Reporter” comic strip was written and illustrated by Dale Messick who lived in Ogden Dunes, IN and inserted many local and personal references into her strip. The comic is in the final stage when it comes to the artist but not for the reader who ultimately would have seen this in the newspaper.

I swear that dog is watching us… 🤨

Check out this postmark stamp! It is from a town that no longer exists! The Tassinong Post office was founded the year after Porter County was founded in 1836, making it one of the earliest European settlements in the region. By 1884, almost all of the Porter County post offices were receiving their mail by rail, Tassinong was one of two still serviced by horseback. At the turn of the 20th century, when the Kankakee Marsh was being drained, the people of Tassinong refused to allow a proposed rail line to come to their town. The railroad, instead, bypassed the village and promoted a new town called Kouts. In 1903 the Tassinong post office was discontinued with all of the people relocating to somewhere serviced by rail.

Can you imagine checking someone out on this cash register? This is a nickel plate brass National Cash Register manufactured in 1914 sold to Wark’s Hardware in Valparaiso. The register worked perfectly at Wark’s until the early 1990s when someone broke into the store and broke the machine. Mr. Wark was not one to throw things away just because they didn’t work, so he disconnected one of the cash drawers from the machine and then it became a very large cash drawer until the store closed in the early 2000s.

Turns out she WAS watching us! This is Daisy the taxidermied dog and her eyes follow you! She is 90 years young and belonged to Helen Slanger of Portage, IN. She has been in the museum’s collection since the 1970s and has become an unofficial icon of the museum.

After journeying through ‘Connections’, we finally made it to “Ever Yours: Postcards from the Golden Age” — the exhibition we had been looking for! I don’t think that that postcard will fit in a regular mail slot…

Did you know that the first postcard was created in 1869!?

The PoCo Muse has over 2000 postcards in their collection. How did they narrow it down to the couple hundred on display? The wall of postcards that are behind us here were all received by one man, John Griffin, from Valparaiso, IN!

Did you know that approximately 1 billion penny postcards were sent every year between 1907 and 1915?

All of these flip books have both sides of a historic postcard with transcriptions! This one is a real photo postcard showing Lila and Thaddeus Whitlock posing with their dog Maxie. Lila sent this to her daughter Olive who was studying Nursing in Iowa in 1912. It is nice to see that people have felt conflicted about their selfies from the beginning; “I was so engaged in trying to keep Maxie still, I forgot to look pleasant.”

The exhibit makes the comparison of postcards to social media of today. The message is public since there is no envelope, the amount of text is limited to the space available on the card, and it is accompanied by an image which might be compared to today’s use of memes. Just like social media today there was pushback to the use of postcards with detractors saying that postcards symbolize “the triumph of the commonplace.”

This binder of postcards shows an individual’s collection of historic postcards that they loaned for the exhibit. In the early 20th century it was common to invite guests over and flip through your postcard collection. Similar to showing friends vacation photos.

After reading all of those postcards it was nice to color some for ourselves. Plus once we are done coloring the booklet, it can be turned into a postcard — just tape it shut and add a stamp on the back! On the wall above, the many postcards sent to the museum are on display, which helps to show that postcards are still thriving today! Hurray! 🎉

Thank you to the wonderful team at the Porter County Museum, and especially Visitor Experience Manager Quinn, for opening their arms to the Little Mail Carriers and showing them around. If you’re in the area, the exhibition will be there until January 7th, so don’t miss it!

The little ones are back on their envelope and on their way to their next adventure… who knows where they’ll pop up!

Hanako's dreamy posts on Instagram caught our attention some years ago. Featuring quirky Japanese mailboxes, pretty stationery and her own beautiful artwork, they made us dream of visiting the “land of the rising sun”… but pandemic years were tricky for making trips abroad, so we did the next best thing, and sent the Little Mail Carriers instead! 😊 Here they are, to report on their adventures!

Kon’nichiwa! Many greetings from Japan, where our host Hanako lives and does her art (including postcards for Postcrossing meetings)! She promised to give us a tour of Tokyo, so let’s get started! First stop: a post box! This is what a normal postbox in Japan looks like.

We headed to the Kyobashi Post Office in Tsukiji, Tokyo. Today the special stamps “International Letter-Writing Week, 2021” were just issued. We had the first-day postmarks put on the postcards and on an envelope made from a museum flyer. The stamps are showing famous woodblock prints by Hokusai. Everyone knows his iconic “The Great Wave off Kanagawa”… but did you know the painting is part of “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji”, or that it used a new kind of blue pigment which revolutionized Japanese prints?

About half of post offices in Japan have their own pictorial postmarks. These postmarks are called 風景印 (fukeiin). We had the fukeiin of Kyobashi Post Office put on our little passport. It illustrates a scene from Sukeroku (known as The Flower of Edo, in English), one of the most famous plays in the Kabuki repertoire.

Kabuki is a type of Japanese classical dance-drama, characterized by elaborate stage makeup, fancy costumes and stylized performances that date back to the Edo period. Why does the fukeiin stamp show Kabuki here? Because the Kyobashi Post Office is located near Kabuki-za, the principal theater for Kabuki plays!

Next, we visited Ueno Station. In Japan, you can find special souvenir stamps like this at railway stations, museums or tourist spots. If you travel around Japan, we really need to bring a notebook for stamp collecting!

Awwww… isn’t it cute? We saw the panda postbox near Ueno Zoo, which is the oldest zoo in Japan. Twin pandas were born here in June 2021, and they were named Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei.

Yay! We found the Pokémon manhole-cover in front of the National Museum of Nature and Science! Hanako says manhole-cover hunting is one of the pleasures of a trip to Japan. There are various kinds of manhole-covers with local design.

Another one is here in front of the Tokyo National Museum! There are many museums in the Ueno area, so you can’t see all of them in one day. If you visit Japan for the first time and need to choose only one museum in Ueno, we heard the Tokyo National Museum is a good one to see, so that’s where we are headed! The building was built in 1937, and is often used as the location for Japanese TV dramas.

We took our time looking around the exhibits. The Tokyo National Museum has many national treasures as their collection. Above is one of them, the Tachi Sword made by Yoshifusa in the 13th century. Have you watched “Seven Samurai”, the Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa? Samurai swords are quite interesting cultural artifacts, not to mention really beautiful.

This work of sculpture titled “Aged Monkey” made by Koun Takamura is famous among Japanese philatelists, because it was selected as the subject of the 60-yen stamp from the Modern Art Series, issued in 1983. Of course, we bought the matching postcard, too!

Aaaaaaaah, the museum shop is a postcard paradise! 😍 How many should we buy?! Can’t decide because all of them look amazing!

It’s about time for lunch! OK, we have soba here today. Soba is a noodle made from buckwheat and is popular as healthy food. Chopped spring onions (also known as scallions) and grated ginger go well with it. The soba restaurant Yabusoba in Ueno was established in 1892. Hanako showed us the cute soba stamp issued in 2016.

After lunch, we came to Tokyo Skytree by bus! This 634 meter-high tower was completed in 2012 and became a new symbol of Tokyo.

We visited the Postal Museum on the 9th floor of Tokyo Solamachi, the shopping mall under Tokyo Skytree. The Skytree postbox warmly welcomed us.

The exhibits in the museum are super interesting for postcrossers! Here are mail carriers’ caps from the early 20th century. The caption says the straw hat was for summer. It’s cool, isn’t it?

And this is a replica of the postal snowmobile in the 1940s and 50s. Wow, we want to try to drive it, it looks like the perfect size for us!

We also saw some cancelling stamps in the early 20th century. It’s always fun seeing old postal tools.

And at last, we arrive at the counter of the old post-office, used between 1920s or 1930s to 1988 at Kanda Sudacho Post Office, in Tokyo. How many postcards and letters have crossed this counter over the years? And how many stamps it must have seen!

Sadly, this is where our tour of Tokyo comes to an end. It was a lot of fun to return to Japan so many years after our trip to Okinawa, to discover a bit more of this fascinating country! Where do you think we should go next?

Thank you Hanako, for showing the little guys so many cool things about Japan! We’re dreaming of visiting and “collecting” all the cool manhole covers and special postmarks… 😍

Have you ever heard of Malta? It is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea, between Italy and Libya, and despite its small size, it is a very densely populated country, filled with interesting history… including postal history! The Little Mail Carriers begged us to go visit, and so we sent them on to meet Lara Bugeja, the museum’s curator. Here is their report!

Ħello everyone! 👋 We arrived in Valletta, Malta’s capital on a beautifully sunny day and made our way to the Malta Postal Museum. We stopped outside for a photo and to admire the Baroque facade of this converted Valletta home. Lara mentioned everyone at the museum was delighted to see us as they had never had anybody so small visit!

Our first stop was in one of the galleries where an exhibition of landscape paintings was being set up. Did you know that the Postal Museum also functions as a Art Hub? We were lucky to see this nice exhibition coming together, from our perch on a wonderful sunset.

But we came here to see stamps and letters, so Lara gave us a whistle-stop tour of the museum. It was so much fun deciphering the script on the archive of letters, and admiring the wax seals! Most letters were in French, but some were in Italian, English and a few were in Maltese. The earliest form of postal service in the island dates from the early 1530s, when business letters were carried by small sailing vessels between Malta and Sicily.

We then hopped up onto one of their old postal counters and played for a bit, pretending to buy and sell stamps. The Museum has a fully functional post office, which in the past few years even had special postmarks for the World Postcard Day!

On a screen there was a video playing about mail distribution during the times of the Malta plague epidemic, so we got to learn about the deadliest event in Maltese history, which took place between December 1675 and August 1676. At the time, it was thought that paper could transport the disease, so mail was quarantined and disinfected. Although the video was interesting, we were horrified by the sheer number of rats that poured out of the screen… quite scary for us, being so small!

For something lighter, we decided to climb to the top of one of the museum’s motorcycles! The James ‘Captain’ 200cc motorcycle was used in the 1960s by postmen delivering to the more rural and inaccessible areas of Malta and Gozo. We managed to get up there safely, but it took us a while… Then, since we were already at it, we did the same with the bicycle near the entrance – and once we made it to the top, we had a good rest and brought out a picnic lunch!

After all these activities, we were quite exhausted, so we left to have a very well-deserved rest. Everyone in the museum was super nice, and we were delighted to meet them!

Thank you Lara, for taking care of the little ones and showing them the Malta Postal Museum! Into their padded envelope they go, and who knows where they will land next… 😉