Postcrossing Blog

Salut everyone!

Today we’d like to tell you about a group of enthusiastic postcrossers from Romania and Moldova who have recently come together in Chișinău to celebrate their hobby. Being from neighbouring countries with many traditions and a language in common (not to mention a hobby!), it just made sense for them to cross the border and meet… and also to try to make Postcrossing more popular in Moldova.

In order to do this, they organised a collaborative exhibition and a meetup, which took place in Moldova’s main post office on July 29th. It was a huge success! Here are some pictures from this event:

The stands around the post office were filled with postcards either sent to the exhibition by other postcrossers, or from the collections of the postcrossers in attendance, who took the opportunity to showcase some of their favourite postcards and tell interesting postal stories. For instance, did you know that a lot of postcards to Moldova are sent to Maldives by mistake?

It was a busy day in the post office, as it was the last day of the month and many people were around to pay their bills. Many of them saw the exhibition while waiting, curiously checking out what this big group of people were doing around the table. The postcrossers were a busy bunch: together, they sent over 600 postcards to all around the world, bearing a special cancellation mark that Moldova Post did specifically for the occasion. Even the national news station came to check out what all the commotion was about!

Bravo, everyone! A big thank you to Olga (aka Elyna333) and Mihnea (aka MihneaR) for organising the meeting, to Moldova Post for letting them use the space, to the UFRM (The Philatelic Union of Moldova) for letting them use their stands, and last but not least, to everyone who participated and helped put together such an inspiring event!

February 24th will go down in (Postcrossing) history as the day the Romanian Postcrossing-themed stamp was launched! George (aka Nazareanu) and Mihnea (aka MihneaR) were there to participate in the events and wrote back to tell us all about it!

The stamp launch day started at the Romfilatelia Headquarters (the National Stamp Issuing Authority) with the stamp concept/identity presentation by Luminita Toncu, who is the head of the department. For this event, postcrossers came from all over Romania: Bucharest, Ploiesti, Suceava, Gura Humorului, Oradea, Zalau, Constanta, Cluj-Napoca, Brasov, and even 3 from outside Romania, from Czech Republic, Italy and USA.

The day continued with a conference of 2 presentations and 5 speeches organised by members of the Romanian Postcrossing Community for the people present in the audience.

The first presentation was about “The Postcrossing Diversity: Connecting people”, presented by George Năzăreanu (Nazareanu), which marked the various stories and emotions transmitted through postcards, the benefits of Postcrossing meetings, recreative & cultural events possible, and the importance of sharing the Postcrossing hobby at local schools & kindergartens for the children’s education by exposing them to “hands on” learning activities. The presentation ended with the message from Paulo Magalhães & Ana Campos for the Romanian Postcrossing Community for this once in a lifetime event.


After the presentation, five speakers took the stand (in order from left to right): Ovidiu Bucse (aka Ovidius), talking about “Postcrossing meetings in the world“, Andra Ardeleanu (aka AndraArd) who examined “The need of stamps diversity”, Eugen Mihai (aka aeumihai2003) discussing “Photography and postcards”, Michelle Ordeltová (aka Michellie) taking about “Building bridges across nations” and Cornel Jipa (aka corneljipa), a member of the Romanian Philatelic Federation since 1976, telling the story of “Romanian philately along time".

The second presentation was “Postcards: hobby & people” by Mihnea Raducu (MihneaR), sharing his experience with postcrossers meetups during his travelling inside and outside Romania.

Making History: The signing of the official special panel, which will be displayed on the “Hall of Fame” Stamp corridor at the Romfilatelia Headquarters.

Otilia and Noar (noarvladimir), the future Postcrossing generation exploring and discovering the visual wonders found on postcards.

Group photo with both the Postcrossing community and the philatelic team that made the stamp possible.

Over the next couple of days, the community gathered to properly celebrate this milestone… and of course signed lots of postcards with the new Postcrossing stamp!

This is a stack of stamped meeting postcards, which got filled up with signatures, Postcard IDs and addresses ready to be sent out within minutes! This is how much we awaited this memorable event. In total, over 1400 postcards were signed and sent over into the world.

At the end of this lovely day, with the heart filled with joy and the mind filled with unique memories, the Romanian Postcrossing Community can only say: Happy Postcrossing everybody!

Thank you Marius Smadu (msmadu) for the nice photos, George (aka Nazareanu) and Mihnea (aka MihneaR) for the report and to everyone who participated — looks like a very nice event! 😊 Hurray!

It’s only February yet, and we’re already reporting the second Postcrossing-themed stamp being issued this year… 2017 is off to a fantastic start!   

So ladies and gentlemen, we’re proud to announce that in just 2 days, Romania will join the ranks of the countries which have issued a Postcrossing stamp. They may have less than 1500 postcrossers there, but their unwavering enthusiasm for the project convinced their post office this was a good idea — and we’re glad for their fierceness! We’re especially thankful to Mihnea (aka MihneaR) whose persistence and commitment to this idea in every step of the way were crucial in bringing this new stamp to life.

Have a look at their new stamp, which will be published on February 24th:

We bet it’ll look pretty cool on all their postcards! 😀

The new stamp sheet (and accompanying FDC) will be available from Friday on Romfilatelia's shops in Bucharest, Bacau, Brasov, Cluj-Napoca, Iasi and Timisoara or online, on the WOPA website.

To celebrate the stamp issue, Romanian postcrossers are organising a couple of meetups in Bucharest this Friday and Saturday, and planning to send lots of postcards with the new stamp. Do join them, if you’re in the area!

And if you’re not in Romania, keep an eye on your mailbox — your next postcards from there might feature their shiny new stamp!

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”? :)

Remember the Armenian Street Festival we mentioned here on the blog, back in June? It took place last weekend in Bucharest, and it was a great success!

Many of you responded to our call for postcards, and the organisers were flooded with your kind messages and support. George (aka Nazareanu) sent us some photos of the postcard display they built:

George tells us the people in attendance were quite impressed, and so are we! It warms up our hearts to see people getting up and close with the postcards, taking the time to read them. If you’re curious, you can see many more photos of this colourful event on their Facebook page… from concerts to calligraphy workshops, seems like a good time was had by all! :)

The participants took the photo above to say thank you to everyone, and sent us the following message:

Every card received is amazing and the messages are unique and very emotional for us. We appreciate your gestures very much and this way, we want to thank all the Postcrossing community and the wonderful people around the world who wrote us!

Well done to the organisers of the Armenian Street Festival — and a big thank you to every postcrosser who sent a card to the festival!