Postcrossing Blog

So many meetings, so little time! We’re way overdue in telling you about all the cool Postcrossing meetups we’ve been hearing from, so here are three recent events that postcrossers have organized and written to us about. We hope they inspire you to join or organize your own local meetup!

Postcrossing Anniversary Meetups in Indonesia 🇮🇩

Last month, the Indonesian community celebrated Postcrossing’s 14th birthday by organizing meetings in 11 different cities around the country — isn’t that awesome?! Look at this cool mashup that they’ve made with photos of all the meetings:

There’s happy people, cake and balloons… looks like a real birthday party! Lots of postcrossers in the cities of Batam, Medan, Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Semarang, Solo, Surabaya, Malang, Makassar and Tenggarong enjoyed spending time together, talking, snacking and writing postcards, of course! You can see more of their meeting photos on this page.

China Bullet Train Meetup Series 🇨🇳

The idea for this unusual series of meetups came from Bin Xu (aka bishopet) who is a super fan of trains and postcards! To combine the two, he contacted 8 postcrossers from 8 different cities along the China Bullet Train route, in Shenyang, Shandong, Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Dongguan and Hong Kong. Meetings were organized in all these cities throughout the month of June, each one with a different postcard featuring the bullet train.

Nizhny Novgorod Postcrossing Meeting 🇷🇺

About three weeks ago, 74 postcrossers from 29 Russian cities got together in Nizhny Novgorod to share their love of postcards with the world! Over the weekend, they wrote and sent almost 2000 postcards — but most importantly, they got the chance meet and get to know each other. Russia is a huge country and for many postcrossers, this was the first chance they got to meet some of the people that they had only previously known online or through postcards. They even had a special postmark made for the event, along with a little mobile post office by Russian Post that allowed everyone to mail their cards immediately. It looks like a lot of fun!

Deers are a symbol of the city of Nizhny Novgorod, and this cute one is the mascot of the local Postcrossing group. These photos are by Anna (aka AnnaRybakova_79), and you can see many more on this page.

That’s all for now! If you’ve been in a nice meetup recently, send us some photos and let us know how it went — we’d love to hear about it. 🙂 And if you’re thinking of joining or organizing a meetup, consider October 1st as a potential date, and join us in celebrating the 150th anniversary of the postcard!

Yup, you read that correctly: postcards are celebrating their 150th anniversary this year! Hurray!! 🎉

October 1st, 1869 was the day the Austrian Post decided to implement Dr. Emanuel Herrmann’s recommendations for a practical and cheaper means of sending short messages. Up until then, letters were the norm, but they were expensive and filled with formal etiquette, taking some effort to write. So postcards were born to simplify things… and the rest is history.

For some months now, we’ve been busy behind the scenes researching the history of postcards and putting together a special website to commemorate the anniversary of our favorite means of communication, and to encourage the whole world to re-discover the joy that is finding a postcard in a mailbox.

We know that October is still some months away, but a sesquicentennial anniversary is a pretty big deal and it definitely deserves a party — which is where YOU come in!

Your mission, if you wish to accept it, is to plan a meetup with other local postcrossers to celebrate the 150th anniversary of postcards. Meet new friends, make some postal-themed activities, or just send postcards together. It can be as small or as big as you’d like — the important thing is to have fun and celebrate the postcard. This is a birthday party, after all! 😉

If you’ve never organized a meetup before, don’t worry, it’s easy! Reach out to other nearby postcrossers via private message or on the forum, and when you’re more or less set on a plan, make a post about it on the forum (here’s a quick how-to guide to meetups). There are already a few meetings being planned for this special celebration, and we look forward to adding lots more to the events page.

This next part is optional, but in the spirit of connecting the world, it would be super cool if these meetings were connected with other meetings happening simultaneously, or with other postcrossers celebrating the day. If internet is available in the place where you’ll meet, consider livestreaming or reaching out to other meetup hosts in advance, to set up a video chat so everyone can say hi! Let us know what your plans are, and we can help spread the word about it.

Ok, I think this is all for now! We’ve written a bit more about these meetups on this forum post, where you can ask further questions.

Come discover the history of postcards on 150yearsofpostcards.com, and spread the word about this remarkable #150yearsofpostcards anniversary — let’s make it a party that the whole world will remember!

Thank you everyone for your comments on Postcrossing’s anniversary post — your kindness and thoughtful words were the highlight of our day!

Quite a few meetups took place all around the world on Postcrossing’s birthday last weekend, and we were so emotional watching all the videos and photos, we decided to share some with you.

In Tofte and Filtvet (two small coastal towns along the Oslo fjord in Norway), a large meetup took place that included participants from all over Europe. Together, they’ve wished Postcrossing a good anniversary by singing the “Happy Birthday” song in their own languages… what a nice idea! We cannot stop smiling when we watch this video. I hadn’t even realized that the song had a different tune in some languages, and was delighted to discover that it sounds just as festive in Greek or Norwegian!

In Portugal, a birthday meetup in July has already become a tradition. This year’s meeting took place in Setúbal (a town famous for its dolphins) and it featured a cute birthday cake. Gracinha, one of the participants, had just celebrated her own birthday last week, so the participants also included her name on the cake, and sneakily prepared a big card and gifts to offer her during the meetup. She loved the surprise!

Isn’t that just wonderful?

Across the world in Indonesia, the Postcrossing community came together to organize a postcard exhibition and meeting at the Plaza Semanggi mall in Jakarta. Looks like a good time was had by everyone at the event which stretched for several days and included live music and even a doodling workshop! You can see tons of more photos on their Instagram page.

Hurray! People coming together and making new friends could not be more in the spirit of this project, so we’re delighted to see so many happy faces on these photos and videos. 😍 If you’d like to participate in one in the future, don’t forget to check the Postcrossing meetups calendar now and then, to keep updated on new events taking place in your area.

We have another exciting meetup report to share with you, all the way from Malaysia 🇲🇾 . The Postcrossing community there is super-enthusiastic and decided to do something special this past World Post Day. They had several simultaneous meetups around the country, took lots of photos and prepared this report to inspire you all to get out there and meet each other!

The 5th Malaysian Postcrossing meetup was held on October 9th 2017, at the Kuala Lumpur General Post Office, in conjunction with World Post Day 2017 celebration and stamp launch. The meeting was held at the hall of the post office building on the 3rd floor. A total of 46+ postcrossers from all over Malaysia participated in this meetup.

Postcard signing activity commencing and some of the meetup cards produced by Malaysian postcrossers

The event start off at 10am with speeches by Mdm. Diyana Lean Abdullah (Head of Stamp & Philately Department, Pos Malaysia) and Dato’ Anuar Bashah (President of Philatelic Society of Malaysia). A short talk on “Development of Postcrossing in Malaysia & How to Promote Postcrossing” was given by Shaliza Atikah (aka Honeysha).

A postcard exhibition and competition was held at the same hall, with a total of 18 exhibition panels from 17 participants. The topics exhibited ranged widely; i.e. anime, maxicards, orangutans, postal related items, Year of the Rooster 2017, weddings, and many more. Each panel consisted of 16 A4-size frames. The competition was judged by fellow meetup participants and the President of Philatelic Society of Malaysia.

Postcard exhibition and competition

Meetup participants — big and small!

This year, the meetup was also joined by a group of students from the school SK Putrajaya Presint 14(1). They were introduced to the hobby of postcard collecting and participated in postcard writing activity and colouring competition. The event ended around 1.30pm with the prize giving ceremony for the postcard exhibition competition and school children colouring contest. A lucky draw event was also held with the prizes being postcards and souvenirs given by the participants.

Group photo of all the participants in the Kuala Lumpur meeting

Another meetup occurred simultaneously in Kota Kinabalu, the state capital of Sabah. The meetup brought together 9 postcrossers at a local restaurant and the Kota Kinabalu General Post Office. They visited the mail sorting area of the general post office and presented the staff with a cake to celebrate World Post Day.

Meeting in Kota Kinabalu with visit to mail sorting area at the post office

A mini meetup also occurred at the post office in Tenom, an interior region of the state of Sabah:

Mini-meetup in Tenom

The next day (10/10/2017), two Malaysian postcrossers (Shaliza Atikah aka honeysha85 and Kamaruzaain A. Kadir aka kamaruzaain) appeared on a segment of the TV programme “Malaysia Hari Ini” to promote Postcrossing and the hobby of postcard collecting. The programme also highlighted the World Post Day meetup, with interviews from some of the participants. The programme segment is available on this YouTube link.

Pos Malaysia and Philatelic Society of Malaysia were supportive of Malaysian postcrossing activities, providing the venue for the meetup, door gifts, competition prizes, etc. Also this year, we are able to collaborate with the Panda Post (China) which provided us with Panda Post cartoon postcards for the meetup participants.

Also, thanks to all the committee members who have contributed their time and energy to ensure the success of this meetup: Kamaruzaain A. Kadir (aka kamaruzaain), Khor Kok Keong (aka kkkhor), Matthew Lai KH (Matthew07), Nurulhuda Abdul Kadir (newrule), Shaliza Atikah (honeysha85), Tan Wei Loon (alansxi86), and Yoong Pooi Leng (plyoong).

Photo credits: Matthew Lai, Natasha Putri, Fiona Wong, Caroline Chia and May Anny.

Thank you guys, that was fantastic! 👍

No matter whether a meeting is big or small, it’s always nice to meet new friends and share the love of postcards with other like-minded people… so have a look in the meetups page for events happening near you, or feel free to organise your own on the forum!

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!