Jetske (in The Netherlands) kindly volunteered to introduce postman Paulo and postwoman Ana to Dutch delights. They were really happy to have such warm introduction to the country of tulips, clogs and vla, and wrote back to tell us their adventure! :)
Arriving and checking a mailboxHere we are, arriving in Jetske’s mailbox after traveling across Europe.
So this is where Jetske picks up her Postcrossing postcards and now she finds us here as well. How exciting!
Of course, since we are mail carriers we are curious to see what a Dutch mailbox looks like. We’ve learned there are red mailboxes and orange mailboxes. The red mailboxes are older. When the Dutch postal service changed to TNT Post, some years ago, they changed most of the mailboxes to new orange coloured ones. Don’t fall in the mailbox Paulo!
Meeting day!
Today is a big day! We are going to our first Postcrossing meeting. The meeting is in Rotterdam, which is a drive of about 100 km to the North.
Here we are, in the car, on the Zeeland Bridge, which is the longest bridge in The Netherlands.
We arrived in Rotterdam and met in a cafe with Dandilion and JokeJacket where we enjoyed a delicious apple pie.
After coffee and apple pie we went to the best postcard shop of the country, De Egel. Here we also met the rest of the Postcrossers.
The woman in pink is a Postcrosser too. She had no idea there was a meeting that day and just came to the shop to buy postcards. When she saw us she asked if we were Postcrossers too and we all said yes! :D We invited her to stay with us for the rest of the day, and she did.
There are many cards here! We want to put them all in our little yellow basket!
Two hours later and with many new postcards, we travelled by tram to a restaurant called Bazar for postcard writing and lunch. Here we also met some other little travellers.
Time to go home but before we left we sent the postcards we wrote in the restaurant. Here they go, into a red mailbox:
Exploring a TNT Post office
Back to exploring mail services.
Here we are at the counter of a TNT Post office. The office is rather small and located inside a bookshop. Bigger post offices are closing down and now there are several smaller TNT Post counters in other shops instead.
In the Post office there’s a mailbag for bigger parcels that don’t fit in the mailbox. Luckily we are small and light, checking our weight on the scales, so we don’t need to travel in this bag!
On the picture in the bottom righ, you can see the “Boekenweekpostzegel”: a stamp in the shape of a small, real book, with real pages. The stamp was issued for a special event regarding books.
It’s our last day in The Netherlands already! But before we leave we enjoy this dish Jetske prepared for us. Poffertjes, they look like small and thick pancakes covered with lots of powdered sugar but they taste a bit different, nicer!
Bye! See you soon on our next destination!
