Postcrossing Blog

The writing prompts invite postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards’ messages every month. These are just suggestions though — if you already know what you want to write about, or the recipient gives you some pointers, that’s great too!

We have a forum topic for people to contribute writing prompt suggestions for us, Jane (aka MostlyMess) suggested a classic conundrum: if you had a time machine, what time period would you visit, and why?

For me, it’s pretty difficult to say! I have a lot of questions first: how long would I have to stay? Would I be able to interact with anything, and if so, am I well disguised? You can see I have a practical sort of attitude to the problem… But if I’m just daydreaming, and I could choose to go to any time period as an observer (and return whenever I choose), then there’s one obvious answer for me. I want to see dinosaurs!

My favourite dinosaurs are probably ceratopsians (like Triceratops) and stegosaurs. Those two genera of dinosaurs never met, unfortunately, so I’d have to pick just one… If I want to see Triceratops, looks like I’m headed to the Late Cretaceous! I’d probably have to be very lucky to catch a glimpse, but hopefully my time machine would guide me to the right spot.

If forced to pick an era of human history, I’d quite like to go wander around Castell Coch (my favourite castle) when it was newly decorated by William Burges, and no one could stop me wandering into every room!

How about you? Would you join me on a trek back into the Cretaceous, or are you happy with human history? Is there a place you want to visit at a specific time, or something you’d like to find out? Let us know in the comments here, or write about it in your postcards this month (or both!).

Sometime ago, postcrossers Andry (aka andry1961) and Maret (aka cerres) from Estonia signed up for the Budapest to Bamako Rally (also known as B2B), and decided to take Postcrossing with them on the trip. What is the B2B, you might ask? It is a bit of a crazy idea! This minimally assisted navigation race from Europe to Africa had its debut in the same year as Postcrossing itself, and celebrates its 17th anniversary in a few days, on December 26. In the rally, participants have to rely on their luck, resources and skills to make their way from Budapest (Hungary) to Bamako (Mali). These days, the rally ends in Freetown in Sierra Leone though, due to instability in Mali. There are no rescue helicopters, tow trucks, translators or guides: between the checkpoints and border crossings, everyone is on their own.

You might be thinking… what does a rally have to do with Postcrossing? 🤔 Well, Andry and Maret are well-traveled postcrossers, and part of their life goal is to visit a post office and send a postcard from every country they travel to… so naturally, they incorporated this mission into their adventure, and offered to share with us a glimpse of what this looks like in some countries along the way.

Although B2B officially started on October 21 in Budapest, for them, it started some days before that in Estonia, their home country. On their way there, they crossed Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia, visiting postboxes and post offices along the way until finally reaching Hungary, for the start of the big adventure. Once things officially started, they drove through Slovenia, Italy, Monaco, France, Spain and Gibraltar, on their way to the African continent. We were thankful that their itinerary and schedule allowed a detour through northern Italy, where we were able to meet and cheer them on!

On the evening of October 24th, Andry and Maret made it to Tangier in Morocco, to start the African leg of their adventure the next morning. They prepared for their postcard-sending mission by procuring stamps and postcards in advance, and researching post offices addresses… but it was still a challenge to make it work sometimes, as you will learn!

Using the Travel Mode, they were able to mail some postcards from Morocco, both from Tangier and Marrakesh, without too much difficulty. They tried to always get their postage cancelled with the date stamp, to make sure the postcards were really put on their way, which sometimes meant traveling to a different post office to see it happen. Postage for Europe is 9 MAD (≈ €0.81, roughly the same in US dollars), for the USA is 15 MAD (≈ €1.35), and 16.7 MAD for the rest of the world (≈ €1.5), and the fastest of these postcards arrived in Germany in just 7 days!

They then raced south through the endless desert roads of Western Sahara, a disputed territory with a complicated history that you can learn more about here. Dakhla, the capital city, used to be a fishing town and sits in a curious peninsula that juts out from the mainland. Andry and Maret tried their best to make it to a post office before it closed for the weekend, but every branch of Poste Maroc they visited turned them away, stating they were a bank and not a post office… so this was a tricky mission!

Finally, they were directed towards a mysterious unmarked slot on a corner wall and were reassured by the staff that this was the place to drop their postcards, so that they could then be forwarded to the sorting department and receive their cancellation… What a peculiar setup!

Through conversation with a seller at a copy-and-print kiosk, they realized postcards were not for sale anywhere, as a special permit was required to do so. Since not so many tourists came through there, it wasn’t worth it for the local sellers. It’s a good thing they came prepared! They received some very low Postcard IDs from this rarely visited territory (the lowest was EH-14), and the fastest postcard sent from there arrived in the Netherlands in just 12 days. The mysterious slot did its magic!

Onwards to Mauritania! On the way to the capital Nouakchott, Andry and Maret’s van got stuck in the desert sand… but luckily a team from Lithuania came to their rescue! Maret writes that the participants in the rally are all very supportive of each other. In the capital, they chose a hotel in front of the post office, to make things easier.

When they got there, they realized the country had gone through a monetary reform in 2018, which moved a decimal point in their currency… and meant that all the stamps they had bought before leaving home (which were from 2017) were now invalid. 😔 They bought some new stamps, wrote their postcards… but in the meantime the post office had closed, and they ended up mailing their postcards from the mailboxes outside, along the busy street. This is when they realized the post office was guarded by armed forces at night, so their postcards had a police escort! The postage prices were similar to those in Morocco, 440 ouguiya (≈ €1.12) for Europe and 550 ouguiya (≈ €1.40) for mail to the USA.

There are still a few countries left in Andry and Maret’s grand adventure, but this post is already very long… so we’ll save those for a part 2 of this report. Stay tuned for more, and let us know what you think!

It’s almost time! The 70,000,000 postcard might already be on its way to the lucky recipient, so now is the perfect moment to open the guessing game for this big Postcrossing milestone. Here is how it works:

Pretty straightforward, right? Just choose a slot for the date and the minute you think lucky postcard number 70,000,000 will be registered according to your gut feelings. Feel free to have a look through Postcrossing’s statistics page if that helps, or maybe ask your local fortune-teller for a hint!

And as has become tradition in these events, we have some nice prizes too! The postcrosser whose bet is the closest to the exact minute when postcard number 70 million is registered will win a box set of 100 postcards, and the 6 next best guesses (before or after the registering time) will receive a pack of 20–30 postcards each. 🎉 Hurray!

Here are some ground rules: each time slot can only be chosen by one single person, so the first person to pick that slot gets to keep it. You can change it at a later stage if you’d like, but only from the available time slots left. The bets will be automatically closed when there are 1000 postcards left to postcard 70,000,000. Check the contest page for more details.

Good luck, everyone! Keep sending postcards and refining your guesses, and keep an eye on the counter on the frontpage of the website, to know how many postcards still need to be registered… any day now!

The writing prompts invite postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards’ messages every month. These are just suggestions though — if you already know what you want to write about, or the recipient gives you some pointers, that’s great too!

We have a forum topic for people to contribute writing prompt suggestions for us, and Heather (aka HeatherSuncoast) picked a fun one. If you look at the dictionary Merriam-Webster’s website, you can find out the words that entered the English language in the year you were born.

Perusing the year I was born, there are a lot of worthy candidates. I’m quite taken by the word “bombogenesis” (the rapid intensification of a storm caused by a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure), and as a biologist, I’m fascinated to see that we started talking about "DNA phenotyping“ (the process of predicting various things about an organism, such as how it will look, based on a DNA sample alone). It’s also the first year the word ”cybernaut" was used, which seems pretty old-fashioned now.

But the one that surprised me was the word “extremophile”. An extremophile is an organism that lives under extreme environmental conditions, like in a volcanic hotspring or under the ice caps, where most organisms wouldn’t survive. They’re pretty astounding when you think about the kind of conditions they live under, and they’re also responsible for some really beautiful sights, like the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone (pictured), because they create such vivid colours. I was surprised that we didn’t have a word for this kind of organism until 1989!

What about you? Did you find a word that you love, introduced in the year you were born? Or something that seemed appropriate? We’d love to hear your stories, in the comments here and on your postcards this month!

It’s the best time of the year — the time when Postcrossing postcards count for a good cause! It’s hard to believe that this year celebrates the 10th anniversary of this partnership between Postcrossing and Deutsche Post… Ten years have flown by, and in this time, many people have improved their reading and writing skills in Germany with the help of this community. Hurray!

By now, most of you know how this goes, but let’s recap once more for the new postcrossers:

That’s it! If you’re in Germany, now is the right time to stock on postcards and stamps… especially the new Postcrossing stamp! 😍 Once December starts, every postcard you send during that month (that arrives before the end of February 2023) will count towards this good cause. But that is not all, as your postcards could also help you win one of these cool prizes:

• 1 voucher worth €100, to use in Deutsche Post Online Shop
• 5 vouchers worth €50 each, to use in Deutsche Post Online Shop

The more postcards you send, the more you’ll be helping, and the higher are your chances of winning a voucher to spend on Deutsche Post’s shop. Paulo will run his random number generator in March 2023, and we’ll reveal the total amount of postcards sent (and money raised to Stiftung Lesen) on a new blog post. Last edition, €13,729.90 were raised for this good cause, which was just brilliant!

Many of us are not in Germany though, and I know what you’re thinking… how can WE help? It’s easy — we just need to register the postcards we receive extra promptly! In the next few weeks, a lot postcards from Germany are going to be making their way to our mailboxes and the sooner we register them, the sooner it will be possible for that sender to mail another postcard. :)

Stiftung Lesen is a German non-profit organization, working to increase literacy in the population, especially among children and adolescents. Their activities include reading clubs, media literacy projects and initiatives to promote the learning of German language by refugee families in the country. Many of us go through life taking these basic skills for granted, but for those who struggle with them, a small improvement in this area can be life-changing. The work Stiftung Lesen does is super important, and we’re glad for this chance to support them.

We hope you will all join in on the 10th anniversary edition of the “Cards for Literacy” campaign, and are as excited as we are to help others with our postcards!

P.S. – Postcrossing respects your personal information and will not share it with any company without your explicit permission. The full details of this campaign can be read here (German only).