Postcrossing Blog

Remember the Little Mail Carrier’s cousin? It’s been a while since he was last on the blog… Earlier this year, he threw a huge tantrum and demanded to be sent on new adventures — so we sent him off to Romania, where an exciting meeting was about to take place! Here’s their report, as told by the participants in this unique meeting.

Once upon a very special day, on February 29th of 2016, the Romanian Postcrossing Community organized the first Postcrossing train meetup in the world, a round-trip journey between Bucharest and Ploiești. The day started with the arrival of the Little Mail Carriers’ cousin in Bucharest, the capital of Romania. As every tourist would have done, he first went on a sightseeing tour through the wonders of Bucharest.

Naturally, he took some selfies and because he is so small, a special “magnifier tool” was used to be sure everything is in focus!

He started with the Palace of the Parliament which is the heaviest building in the world. It is also the second largest administrative building in the world (after the Pentagon in the USA) housing the Romanian Senate and Parliament and the National Museum of Contemporary Art.

He continued his tour to two of the most prestigious buildings in Bucharest: the House of Economies (CEC) and the National Museum of Music (Cantacuzino Palace).




In front of the Romanian Athenaeum he got really excited, because inside is the longest circular fresco in the world! It was done by Costin Petrescu, and is a stunning piece depicting 25 different scenes of Romanian history over 70 meters of canvas… wow!

The final stop before the meetup was at the Revolution Square, admiring the National Museum of Art (The Royal Palace), the statue of King Carol I of Romania (1866–1914) and the Central University Library.

Finally he arrived at Gara de Nord (train station). The little couriers’ cousin met with members of the Romanian Postcrossing Community and quickly jumped on the train to grab some seats.

We had lots of fun activities during our trip from Bucharest to Ploiești (60 km), such as: signing postcards, organizing lotteries, tasting cupcakes and of course taking photos with our small guest, who even received a nickname for the day: Max!

With this special occasion, we printed a limited edition meetup postcard, showing the Royal train of Romania (Photo by Mihai Raitaru). Everybody signed it — even the train inspectors, who were quite impressed by it!




Once arrived in Ploiești, we gathered for a nice group photo and went on sightseeing, having a few hours available before the train back to Bucharest.


We first visited the Clocks Museum – the biggest clocks collection in South-Eastern Europe.

The Art Museum was next on our list, where we took more photos and signed some more postcards in the lobby. Max got a special surprise from one of our colleagues, who played the piano for him.

Before heading back, one last stop was made at the Postal Office to send our “train traveling meetup” postcards to fellow Postcrossers around the world and to say goodbye to little Max, who continued his journey back to Portugal. At the end of this full and fun day we all went back to our homes with many wonderful memories.

We also found out that this was the first train traveling meetup in the world and all this was possible because Postcrossing exists! Thank you Postcrossing team for bringing us together, thank you for building bridges among people and nations! Happy Postcrossing, everyone!

Train meetup participants (who came from a bit all over Romania):
Anca, bardamu1964, cristinaS, corneljipa, dienuca, DrAmpie, eumihai2003, lamelemon, MaraMilu, MihneaR, modranhoria, mpalade, Nazareanu, NoarVladimir, Schumi99, spiderpc and susanica.

Concept: Mihnea (MihneaR)

Organizers: Mihnea (MihneaR), George (Nazareanu), Eugen (eumihai2003)

Photos: Eugen (eumihai2003) and George (Nazareanu)
 — you can see lots more here!
Article: George (Nazareanu) with the help of Beatrice ( boopilina), Diana (dienuca), Anca (Annajo) and Mihnea (MihneaR)

Thank you guys, that was brilliant! And what do you think… it’s time the Little Mail Carriers’ cousin had a name — should we stick to “Postman Max”? :)

Once again, we give the Little Mail Carriers center stage, so that they can finish telling us about their adventures in Leicestershire (here’s part one of their adventures in the UK, in case you missed it)!

Naturally, we wanted to take part in a Postcrossing meeting whilst we were in England, which we did with our host, her sister and cousin. They have quite a collection of postcards between them and we liked picking out cards to send which showed typically British images. Our favourite was a postcard of William and Kate; the closest we got to meeting any Royalty whilst on our visit!

During our stay, on 9th September 2015, Her Majesty The Queen became Britain’s longest serving monarch, having been on the throne for 63 years and 7 months. This surpasses the reign of her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria. We were really interested to learn more about Queen Elizabeth II and her reign and lots of the newspapers had special editions on this day. We were also very excited to hear that Royal Mail have released a limited edition First Class Definitive stamp in regal purple. The stamp is usually red but will stay purple for 12 months to mark this historic occasion – cool!

Of course wherever we are in the world we like to check out the mail boxes and no trip to the UK would be complete without seeing some of those iconic red post boxes! We were lucky to see a few during our visit, including a traditional pillar box, a very old post box in ">Birmingham, and even a miniature replica (almost the perfect size for us!).

Our favourites though were these two very special gold post boxes in Stratford-upon-Avon. Royal Mail has painted more than 100 of its post boxes gold to celebrate every GB gold medal won during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The post boxes will remain permanently gold to mark the achievements of the athletes and the historic Games – wow! These two are in honour of the appropriately named paralympian rower James Roe.

We loved our day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, where we enjoyed all things Shakespeare, including visiting the Shakespeare Centre and Shakespeare’s Birthplace, posing with a statue of Hamlet, meeting a giant Shakespeare teddy and stocking up on British souvenirs! We also enjoyed watching boats in the sunshine on the canal.

On the final day of our visit, we were treated to a trip to Cadbury World in Birmingham, home of the world famous Cadbury chocolate!

As soon as we got out of the car, we could smell the delicious chocolate in the air! There was plenty of chocolate to be found inside of course, as well as the chance to make some new chocolatey friends; the Cadbury Buttons owl, a purple and white cow and even Bertie Bassett himself!

Phew, what an exciting trip! We had a great time visiting the UK and can’t wait to go back again soon.

Our heartfelt thank you to Sophie (aka FlyingGiraffe) for hosting the little guys and taking them on so many adventures!

Good news, everyone! After a short hiatus, the Little Mail Carriers have written back from the UK, where they were hosted by Sophie (aka FlyingGiraffe). They loved it so much that we’ve had to break their stay in 2 posts! :) You can read all about the first part of their journey below, and stay tuned for more adventures in Leicestershire!

Hello again, everyone!

In September we visited the UK, staying in the county of Leicestershire, in the East Midlands region of England. We stayed in a village and our first job on arrival was to help in our host’s vegetable garden, where we picked home-grown produce such as rhubarb, tomatoes and some purple carrots! We found out that traditionally all carrots were purple; the modern day orange carrot wasn’t cultivated until the end of the 16th century by Dutch growers – interesting! We especially enjoyed climbing up the apple tree to pick some lovely English apples which we then used to bake (and eat!) a delicious apple cake; it was worth all of our hard work!

Bitten by the baking bug, we also helped to make and decorate some delicious vanilla cupcakes which we sold at a charity bake sale held at our host’s workplace to raise money for the charity Jeans for Genes. We even helped make some little jeans out of fondant icing to decorate the cupcakes; they suit Little Paulo don’t you think?!

It was great to visit our host’s office; she works part time at an architectural company. Whilst we were there, we were interested to look at some drawings. Little Ana also helped answer the phone and Little Paulo had a go at some audio typing – it’s harder than it looks!

We enjoyed exploring the Leicestershire countryside, including going on lots of autumnal walks with our host’s dog, a Jack Russell named Ruby, who helped us sniff out some brilliant conkers! Public footpaths in England are marked with distinctive yellow signs so you always know which way to go!

Apparently Leicestershire is well known for many foods, including Red Leicester cheese, Stilton cheese and Pork Pie from the town of Melton Mowbray. Pork Pies are a traditional British meat pie made of chopped meat and pork jelly sealed in a crust pastry. They were tasty but very filling for little people like us!

Our host’s local town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch has lots of interesting things to see and do and we really enjoyed our visit to Ashby Castle, originally a Norman Manor House which is now in ruins. There is a tower to climb and an underground passage to walk through. To round off our visit, we visited the gift shop where we bought postcards of the castle (of course!) and some very special English Heritage stamps which feature images of the castle and are especially designed for use on international postcards – perfect!

Their adventure will continue in a few days… stay tuned!

Hi guys! While Paulo and Ana (the big ones) are busy setting up their new home, we’re here to tell you all about the adventures we had in Canada last fall!

Calgary is a large city of 1.2 million people, in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. It is a beautiful city in Southern Alberta and we came at the perfect time — the splashes of color can be spectacular this time of the year!

The first thing we noticed was this big pile or rocks on CDNLib's front yard. She explained to us that they were called Inuksuks, and were possibly used as symbols of direction, navigation or to mark a food cache by the Inuit of Canada’s North. In recent years they have become an international symbol of Canada — and were even featured on the logo of the 2010 Winter Olympics, which took place in Vancouver!

A trip to Canada had to include some French-Canadian poutine—hot french fries topped with fresh cheese curd and hot gravy… so yummy! And we also had some amazingly fresh-made truffles from a local chocolatier… the pumpkin one was especially scrumptious and perfect for autumn.

And naturally, we had to try a “Double Double” (coffee, or in this case steeped tea, with two cream and two sugar) from world famous Tim Hortons!

We were lucky enough to be in Calgary for the first ever Postcrossing meet-up and we attended with CDNLib. While we were there we chatted with other postcrossers, exchanged some postcards, admired cards that others had received, heard some great Postcrossing stories, signed and wrote out some cards…

… and then posed for a group photo with everyone! Here is the whole group: die-dusche, Stormarela, CDNLib, herchelle, Angelamermaid, ButtonsandTins, salamadzer and Fracula. The meeting went so well, there are plans to do again in 6 months! Check out the meetups posts in the forum and join us if you are in the area!

Below is Calgary’s Public Library — with 18 locations across the city, it is a wonderful place to get together with friends, find some books and be entertained and informed. We were lucky enough to be there during a very special event.

The event is called “A Taste of Cultures” and participants celebrate the different cultures of the world, dressing up and performing in their traditional costumes and serving ethnic food.

It was great! We met these lovely ladies from Pakistan, Mexico and Cameroon.

CDNLib works at a school and one of the best parts of her job is reading stories to the children. The children LOVE to come to their school library and hear the stories and we were invited to listen to a few of them. What a great way to spend the day…visiting with children and hearing stories all day long!

As Halloween was fast approaching pumpkins and Jack-o-lanterns were popping up all over the place.

CDNLib even made us costumes so that we could participate in the celebrations and have some more fun with the children! :)

But while we were in Canada, the country suffered two tragedies, as two Canadian soldiers were killed on home soil. The first was killed in a hit-and-run incident in Montreal, Quebec and the second was a reservist who was killed while acting as a Ceremonial Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Canada’s capital, Ottawa, Ontario. The entire country mourned these two men and you could see the signs of the emotion and loss everywhere.

On Remembrance Day, poppies were worn on people’s lapels. Calgary has its own Field of Crosses Memorial Project that serves as a tribute to those who have served and died for our country from Southern Alberta, dating back to WWI. To date there are over 3000 crosses.

This year they included crosses for the two soldiers killed on Canadian soil in the previous weeks.

The day before we were going to leave, we were out enjoying the sunshine, with some clouds and a temperature of 17°C (62°F), when, within minutes, a change occurred and we could see the storm coming in from the Rocky Mountains—the wind picked up and the temperature dropped more than ten degrees…

… and the next morning, there was snow! Wow! Temperatures can surely change quickly in Southern Alberta!

Ok — time we get back inside our cozy envelope and fly to our next adventure!

Thanks for the great visit, CDNLib — that was a lot of fun!

Well… it might be a bit late for this, but… HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone! We hope you had a nice holiday season, and are ready for a year filled with postcards! We spent this period dragging our boxes of postcards across Europe, and are now firmly set in the southern tip of the continent, where the sun is warm and the oranges are sweetest. :)

Meanwhile, the Little Mail Carriers, have been doing some traveling of their own… to the other side of the globe! Here they are to tell you all about their adventures in the antipodes with their host Vicki (aka madvix):

Hi everyone! We were excited to be invited to Stewart Island to get away from it all! Stewart island is New Zealand's third biggest island. Captain Cook originally thought it was part of the South Island and so it was named in honour of first officer Stewart on a sealing expedition from Sydney in 1809. He determined that it was actually an island!! It is also known as Rakiura, which translates from the Maori as “Land of the glowing skies”, in honour of the beautiful sunsets and sunrises.

We arrived on the island by plane, which is how all the mail comes. They’re quite small planes, carrying a maximum of nine people but the pilot did a brilliant job and the seats have warm and comfy sheepskin covers! We even got to travel up front next to the pilot!

A van came to the airstrip to pick us up and take us down into Halfmoon Bay or Oban, which is where everyone on the island lives. Although Stewart Island is three times the size of Singapore there are only 381 people living full time here! The first views of the island are lots of native bush and you can hear the birds all through the trees.

The Post Office is also the Flight Centre so Vicki was there to pick us up when we landed in her mailbox! There are no posties on Stewart Island, everyone comes down to the Post Office to collect their mail and have a gossip! That means we are officially the first Mail Carriers (little or otherwise) here ever!

We got to sort the mail; up until a couple of months ago all the mail was hand-franked and sent on it’s way. Unfortunately the new-fangled computers can’t read these stamps so that’s not allowed anymore, but you can get a stamp in your passport or on your envelope as long as it’s not near the postage stamps.

We also met Councillor Ford in the Post Office. He is the Island’s MP and also lived next door to us. He approved our Stewart Island passports and they were duly stamped; we belong!

The Post Office is right on the beach, like most places in Stewart Island, and we could watch all the fishermen coming and going. There aren’t as many now as in earlier years, but fishing is still a very important part of the community. Vicki works in the Fishermen’s Co-operative so we went to work with her for a couple of days. It happened to be crayfish (Spiny Rock Lobster) season while we were there, so we sorted the crayfish into different sizes and put them into holding tanks where they sit for a day before they have to fly to China. What a journey for them! We got to ride on a couple and Ana even got to sit on a beautiful purple/lilac coloured one which is quite rare apparently.

The next day we went down to the fish shed where there was a haul of Blue Cod to be filleted. The cod here is a different species from the endangered cod in the Northern hemisphere, so we didn’t feel bad about seeing them. They were huge! Another Postcrosser, Jojogypsy, owns the cafe on the wharf and she cooked us up some tasty battered and deep fried cod and chips.

We had a bit of a scare meeting some of the local bird life. Stewart Island is a great place to see a Kiwi but we were always tucked up in bed nice and early and didn’t see any of those. What we did see though was a lot of the native parrots called Kakas. They’re very cheeky and inquisitive and have learnt that humans mean food. We didn’t feed them though as human food can upset them and make them sick, but I think that might have upset them anyway as one took off with Ana in his beak! Thankfully he put her down not too far away and she was fine although a little shaky!

Anyone who goes to Stewart Island has to go to the South Sea Hotel. It is the only bar on the island and also has accommodation and a restaurant. It is the hub of the community and if you need to find anyone, you can get an answer there! We bumped into the Island’s third Postcrosser while we were there; farfarfaraway works in the restaurant! We also went into the bar for a coke and got invited into a quiz team for the famous Sunday Night Quiz. And our team, No Eye Deer won!

Lots of people when they visit New Zealand pick up paua shell souvenirs and jewelry to take home, but I bet they haven’t seen the creature that lives inside the shell! They are a species of abalone and the beautiful bluey green shells (haliotis iris) can only be found in New Zealand. Unfortunately they are quite hard to find in a lot of places in New Zealand due to people taking too many but they are quite well protected down on the Island (as the local’s call it!). It does make you wonder who thought of eating them first because they don’t look very appetizing!!

Although we flew on and off the Island the other way to reach it is by ferry. The journey takes an hour from Bluff and can be very rough sometimes as Fouveaux Strait is very shallow but the catamarans are very stable and the crew all very experienced. We were allowed to sit at the wheel, but not touch anything!

The biggest surprise to us was when the monthly Stewart Island News came out and there was a photo of us in it! And they want to hear about our adventures too!

We’ve definitely had a lot of rest and relaxation while we’ve been here; it’s like a different way of life with only one supermarket and a handful of shops and cafes, but we’re ready to go on our next adventure back to the bright city lights!

Wow! Way to start the year, guys! :) And thank you Vicki for taking such good care of the littles ones. On they go…