Postcrossing Blog

Photo by Armin von Werner

We love unusual post offices and mailboxes and have featured a few on the blog over the years, from Galapagos to South Africa to the underwater Post Office of Vanuatu. Today’s special postbox comes from somewhere a bit closer to us here in Europe, and is said to have magical matchmaking powers…

The Bridegroom’s Oak is a 500 year old tree in the Dodauer Forst forest in northern Germany, close to the Baltic Sea. It is a special tree, which has its own postal address! Why would it need its own postal address, you might ask? Well, hundreds of people write to the tree every year, in search of a love partner, someone to share their lives with. The tradition is said to have started from this story:

“The name of the tree derives from an incident in the late 19th century. The daughter of the head forester, Ohrt, and the son of a Leipzig chocolate maker, Schütte-Felsche, were in love but her father disapproved of the relationship, so they secretly exchanged letters by leaving them in the hole in the tree’s trunk. When Herr Ohrt gave in and granted his permission, they were married under the tree on 2 June 1891.”

And the rest is history, as they say! As their love bloomed and the story spread, many people started to write to the tree and visit it to read each other’s letters in the the hopes of finding love. So many people came that in 1927 Deutsche Post put up a ladder and gave the tree its own address. A postman was assigned to deliver these letters in a hole on the tree, and this continues to this day.

Many weddings have happened as a result of these letters and encounters, including the one from Karl-Heinz Martens, the postman who for years delivered mail to it. His wife wrote to him through the tree’s address after seeing a report about his special “tree-postman duties” on a TV channel, and they ended up meeting and falling in love. How sweet is that?

Interested in giving it a try, perhaps? :) The Bridegroom Oak’s address is:

Let us know how it goes!

PS – A big thanks to Nhung (aka tthn235), who did the research for this post.

As lovers of all things snail-mail related, we have a soft spot for postcards featuring postal themes. So naturally, when this particular postcard crossed our paths some time ago, it was an instant favourite!

Isn’t it a lovely combination? At the time, we hadn’t realised this particular mailbox actually existed and is was being used daily to receive mail… until one day, someone sent us an email to bring it to our attention! That’s when we learned it belongs to Ellen’s (aka Elfje66) and is hanging outside her studio, in the Dutch village of Zweeloo.

Ellen is a paper artist, and we were happy to talk to her a little bit about her unusual mailbox, and her art works.

Where did the inspiration for your mailbox come from?

In the beginning of 2015 I started to join a 'Stamp my Journal’ project. I fell completely under the spell of making stamp-collages. Since my studio is called El’ Papel (as I am an absolute paper-lover even since I was a little child) I thought it would be great to decorate my mailbox with stamps too!

El’ is short for my first name: Ellen and the P from Papel is also the first character of my second name: Peeks. When I started designing and my own company I visited Spain frequently, so that was also a reason for choosing this name. Besides that, I found a lot of insertion in the Spanish culture.

Is it visible from the street? Did other people (or your mail carrier!) notice? What did they say?

Yes, it is visible from the street! When it was placed on the wall our mailman at that time didn’t respond at it at all! I was really disappointed! But he was a moody man… Now we have several mailman (man and woman) and they noticed as soon as we took the mailbox from the wall, as it needs to be redone a bit. Unfortunately most stamps aren’t printed with UV resistant ink :-( So some stamps lost a lot of their color.

What do you do, apart from creative mailboxes?

I graduated as graphical & typographical designer. But I work mostly as illustrator, designer of birth announcement cards and making merry paper maché objects (mostly fantasy animals). And I like to upcycle used materials. So stamps fit fairly good with this vision.

I have a website and shop, but unfortunately, the text on my website is in Dutch only… but there are a lot of pictures to take a look at! :-)

Here you also can find some of the Postcrossing cards I designed! Of course these are designs with… stamps. ;-)

How did you find out about Postcrossing?

I remember reading about it in the lovely magazine Flow, but forgot all about it. At some point I noticed a dear (post-)friend of mine showed a lot of foreign cards on her Facebook page. I asked her about this and she told and explained me about Postcrossing. She never should have done, as it is quite addictive ;-) In the meantime I join some Dutch Postcrossing groups on Facebook, big fun! We have meetings, what is very convivial. I now have some special post-friends spread across our little country!

Good news, everyone! After many requests, we finally opened a proper PO box for Postcrossing. So, if you’d like to send us a meeting card, show us some cool mail-related item that you found, or just say hi using a postcard, feel free to do so!

Here is the address:

We look forward to hearing from you! :)

P.S. – Depending on the volume of mail we receive, we might not be able to acknowledge all of it. So if you require an answer from us, the Contact form is a better way to receive a reply.

Did you know that the oldest (unofficial) post box in South Africa is not an actual box… but a tree?

It’s true! In 1500, Pêro de Ataíde, captain of a Portuguese ship returning from the East, left a letter under a tree in Mossel Bay. The letter detailed the loss of some of the ships on their fleet and warned of troubles in the eastern seas. It was customary for passing ships to stop on the bay to take on food and fresh water, and so some years later, the letter was discovered and delivered to Portugal by another sea captain.

This was the start of the South African postal service, as seamen often left correspondence there, in the hopes of it being delivered by passing ships.

The impressive milkwood tree is said to be over 600 years old, and still stands there overlooking the bay. It has been declared a national monument, and a postbox was set up under it with its own special cancellation mark and everything! The postbox sits on what is now the Bartolomeu Dias Museum complex.

A big thank you to Cathy, the South African member who pointed out this tree for us and took the nice photos above. That is her auntie Chris on the left, mailing a postcard home!

Don’t you find it amusing to find odd mailboxes while driving down an unfamiliar neighborhood? Most of the time, these interesting mailboxes provide a hint of the owner’s personality and values.

Owning a quirky mailbox can be so much fun as well. What else can complete the whole excitement of the mailing process than getting your mail from a fun and quirky mailbox?

Thanks to Rilda from South Australia who sent us this wonderful blog suggestion about quirky mailboxes. Here are a few examples from her local collection:

Fun, isn’t it?

Most people’s mailboxes are the traditional mail slots that are built-in into their doors or the curbside Joroleman mailboxes that are usually seen in American suburbs. However, several creative individuals have thought of a peculiar way to excite their mail carrier (and themselves) by installing odd-shaped letterboxes.

How do you feel about a letterbox shaped like a mermaid or a fisherman? What about one that looks like a mushroom? Here are a few we found on Flickr that may cause a few giggles and laugh to unsuspecting passersby:

Click on any of these for a full size picture, and to discover who took that picture and where it was taken. There are many more of these on Flickr, just search for funny mailboxes!

Do you have a quirky mailbox too? If so, how quirky is it? Share your quirky mailbox story with your fellow postcrossers!