Postcrossing Blog

Over one hundred years ago, in February 1913, Maude Hart and her husband embarked on a journey across the world. Postcards were at the height of their popularity back then, and Maude wrote back to their family often during their 9 month trip, especially to her sister Myrtle (who she calls Toots) and her mother “Mussey”.

Family mementos like postcards and their stories have a way of getting lost when people move or families unite and separate… but somehow, Maude’s postcards survived 100 years until Patricia Eacobacci (Maude’s great grandniece) discovered them in her mother’s things and put the story together. She scanned, deciphered and uploaded every card with a lot of care, and set up a blog to share her Postcards from Maude.

The first time we laid eyes on this collection we were quite speechless. Postcards are often seen as a one-off thing, but Maude’s postcards (as well as her photos and letters) tell the tales of a epic adventure from another era, one that took place over the course of 9 months. The trip, organized by Thomas Cook & Son, started in San Francisco, and went on to Hawaii, Japan, Philippines, China, Singapore, India, Egypt, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Ireland and then back to the US. Here are some snippets:

Tokyo, Japan April 5
Hello Toots
We are doing Tokyo – a wonderful City. 3 millions natives living here. Only 50 Americans. Just think of it.
Maude

Port Said, Egypt. May 22.
My Dear Mama, We are now going through the Suez Canal in Egypt. Can only go 4 miles an hour. It is very narrow. Tomorrow we get off & go through Egypt for 14 days. This is a most interesting country. Will take 18 hours to pass through Canal.
Much Love,
Maude

Amsterdam, Holland – Sunday night Sept 7.
My Dear Mama.
Hello Mussey dear, how are you? Here is a view of a wooden wind mill. You see hundreds of them here & the people are dressed just like this. We leave here tomorrow. Hope I hear from home when I reach Brussels.
Tons of love,
Maude

Towards the end, you can feel Maude’s homesickness and her eagerness to return to her dear family. On October 22nd 1913, she boarded the SS Majestic bound to the United States on the final stretch of her trip, and wrote again on October 31st, delighted to see New York once more.

These postcards (and the story within them) are a real treat. Thank you Patricia, for all the work and research, and for sharing them with the world! You can see all of Maude’s postcards and follow her voyage in the Postcards from Maude blog.

I love perusing random postcard walls on the website, just to see what lovely cards I can discover. Apparently I’m not alone in my little pastime, since quite a few of you have found SeanPatrick’s gallery and sent us the link! :)

Sean uploads photos of his postcards to the website, but with a twist: featuring himself as well as the postcard! Here are some of his photos:

It took a little getting used to, but I must confess I love it and couldn’t stop myself from going through his entire gallery, like a mini-stalker! I was intrigued by his unusual approach to the postcard wall, so I decided to reach out to Sean and he explained:

I was curious what the postcards would look like upon arrival when I sent mine and I wondered what they might look like in the hands of those that received them. Then it occurred to me… why not take photos of myself with the postcards I received?

Brilliant! How often have I wished for the same thing, to get just a glimpse of the reaction that lights up someone’s face when a postcard I’ve sent finally arrives? I think we can all relate to that.

Sean’s photos are taken by either himself or his daughter, and a bit all over the place: his home, his wine shop or while he’s out and about outdoors. He says many people enjoy seeing their postcards like that.

Postcrossing is about connecting people, first and foremost, and the more I look at Sean’s wall, the more I’m reminded of this. At the end of each postcard’s journey there’s always a person who will receive and hold that card, just like he does… the smile on that person’s face as they open their mailbox and find an unexpected postcard there – that’s what it’s all about!

David (aka david2051) is passionate about giving, be it through micro-lending or by sponsoring children in poor countries. He likes to share his Postcrossing cards with his sponsored kids, and says they love to receive them! :)

Here is what he had to say to our interview questions:

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

My very close friend Ryan told me about Postcrossing and the wonderful postcards he had received and it sounded like fun so I thought I’d give it a try.

I was so surprised when, shortly before going on a vacation to New York City, I received Ryan’s address for an official card! I had a great time finding a postcard for him and then mailing it from the United Nations post office with UN postage.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies? What are you passionate about?

I’ve been interested for some time in doing my part to help fight poverty. For several years I was very involved in microlending on Kiva.org and I co-captain the Postcrossing team on Kiva, along with Ana and Paulo. As a team of 100 members, we’ve made 946 loans in 66 different countries. It would be great for more postcrossers to give it a try!

In the last few years though I’ve gotten very involved in child sponsorship through Children International. A small monthly donation helps provide medical and dental care, clothing, shoes and supplies for school, some tutoring and after school classes as well as access to safe playgrounds, sports and financial literacy programs, libraries and computer labs. In addition you can exchange letters and of course postcards and photos with your child and their family. I now sponsor six children in five countries: Ecuador, Guatemala, Chile, Zambia and the Philippines. In addition I belong to three sponsorship groups (where up to 12 people sponsor one child) for kids in Zambia, Mexico and Colombia.

This collage shows all my kids plus two children sponsored by my friends.

For me one of the most satisfying aspects of sponsoring is being able to provide assistance beyond the monthly support. Whether through individual donations or fundraising efforts, this can include anything from assistance in shopping for food, clothing or birthday and Christmas gifts to digging a well to provide safe drinking water, from helping a single mother establish a small restaurant or cafe…

…to paying off a pedicab loan so a father can retain an additional 35% of his daily income or putting a new roof on a home to keep out the typhoon rains.

Of course I wanted to share Postcrossing with my sponsored kids too! I asked on my profile if anyone would want to send postcards to my sponsored kids, as an official card or for swaps or just as extra cards, and the postcrossing community has really come through. Since July of 2012 I’ve received well over 200 cards for my kids! Several people have sent envelopes containing one card for each child, and some people have sent them cards more than once. It’s just amazing how kind and thoughtful the members of Postcrossing are!

I think this is a fantastic way to widen the horizons of these kids, to share views, greetings and words of encouragement from countries all over the world; it really inspires them to learn more about the world and set bigger goals. When my kids write me letters they always express so much appreciation for the cards and sometimes they include messages back to the senders as well.

There is a wonderful community of Children International sponsors and I blog about my sponsorship experience and the postcard I’ve received for my kids so many sponsors have learned about Postcrossing at the same time many postcrossers have learned about child sponsorship. I think we all benefit and the two go so well together since the sponsorship experience revolves around exchanging letters and cards with these wonderful kids.

Show us your mailbox, your mailman/mailwoman, your postoffice or the place where you post or keep your postcards!

This postcard shows our old post office, sadly no longer used as such, but it’s still a major landmark of downtown Evansville.

This is my mail slot. I can’t wait for the mail to arrive each day! I couldn’t believe I got 6 official cards today! :-)

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t pick just one…

This one means so much to me as I love Seattle and gnomes! It just brings back so many good memories!

The card below is a favorite because of the immigrant story the image of the steamship RMS Majestic can tell us if we take the time to see it. I like to do family research, so I thought it was fascinating to read about a family researcher whose grandmother brought her children here on this steamship, and the postcard image is actually the cover or jacket for her ticket to a new life in America.

And this is a wonderful handpainted card. It’s such an honor to receive a card that took so much effort and love to make. I think this shows how postcrossing brings out the very best in people.

But there are so many awesome viewcards too…

What is it your favorite part of the Postcrossing process?

All of it! When I get a new address I love reading the profile, learning about the recipient’s location, and viewing their favorites to find the perfect card or making one for them. When I receive a card I also read the sender’s profile and study their favorites to get to know them better. I love to study the location depicted on the card and usually look up as much as I can online and place the links I find in the comments and I love the beautiful stamps. Whether meeting nice people in a brief exchange or becoming penpals and cherished friends, it’s all a wonderful experience.

Every time we receive one of your lovely friendship stories, we get a huge smile and can’t help but marvel at the power of simple postcards! On today’s post, Nathalie (aka TotosDawn) from the Netherlands tells us how postcards inspired her to travel – and meet her postcard-pals on the other side of the Atlantic!

When I started sending postcards via Postcrossing I never thought that actual friendships could grow and that the people behind the postcards could mean the world to me! But it happened!

On December 22nd 2010 I became a member of Postcrossing. I had heard a lot about the site, and got excited from the first minute I got my first address. I send out 5 postcards and waited behind my computer to see if they already arrived. Finally they started to arrive and I received my first card back!! The person sending this card is JulianChristopher. He sent me a beautiful card of the Sequoia National Park in California. I immediately fell in love with not only sending postcards, but also I wanted to go there because it looked amazing!

Besides sending the official postcards I started to send more and more private swaps and adding postcards to my favorites. Many cards from Blkbird were (and still are!) in my favorite gallery. She send me a message to ask if we could do a private swap! Of course!! It was difficult for me to choose which one of the beautiful cards of my favorites I wanted… One day, a big surprise was waiting for me when I found the private swap in my mailbox: it was an envelope filled with all the cards I added to my favorites send by her! I was amazed to see how sweet someone completely strange to me could be! We started talking and I fell in love again with the beautiful landscapes on the postcards: Colorado!

If before America had never crossed my mind as a holiday destination, now I was checking hotels, flight tickets, rental cars… My love for America only grew the more postcards I got, but it also became more specific. Sequoia National Park, the first card I got, was still in my head and I wanted to see more it. And who better to ask about it than the person who send me my first card? He was so sweet and sent me some more cards and then one thing led to another and we became 'postcard-pals’ and sometimes we spoke on Facebook. I didn’t forget about Colorado either, neither about Blkbird. We kept sending postcards and I fell in love more and more with America.

So when my husband proposed, we didn’t need to think about a honeymoon destination: AMERICA! We planned a roadtrip, crossing all the places I saw on the postcards I loved. But one thing I really wanted to do to was to meet the people who were so sweet to me all this time and had become my friends. I wasn’t sure if they would like to meet me too, I mean, I’m a stranger from another country, who they only knew via Facebook and postcards. But both were really enthusiastic about my plans and we planned the meetings.

First it was JulianChristopher's turn. We planned to see each other in the Sequoia National Park, where else! From the first moment we met I felt so happy and blessed that I had the chance to meet him and his sweet son. I just couldn’t believe that it was real, that it wasn’t a dream. We spend hours hiking and chatting. He could tell us so much about Sequoia, America and so much more. How special to spend time together in the park he showed me for the first time on a postcard as a total stranger!! Time flies and when the moment of saying goodbye came closer I didn’t wanted to say goodbye and felt sad. But no tears when we said goodbye, only a big smile of gratefulness that I could experience this and actually meet the 'stranger-friend from America’.

Meeting Blkbird was just as special as meeting JulianChristopher. Last minute we decided to have dinner the night before we had planned to spend together. We were waiting at the restaurant and she was a bit late, so I was nervous that she wouldn’t come or that she saw us waiting and thought: NO WAY! Nothing of that was true and when we met it was like meeting an old friend after years. No uncomfortable feelings, just chatting, eating, laughing. The restaurant was closing so we needed to go unfortunately but I was more then happy to know that we would meet again the next day.

We planned to go to the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Denver and the Dushanbe teahouse in Boulder. We enjoyed her 'guided tour’ and company. It was unbelievable how much we had in common. She could have been my mother or sister or twin. She is so alike me that it almost is scary!! No surprise that we didn’t want to say goodbye, so we sat for hours in the car when we got 'kicked out’ of the teahouse. Just talking and enjoying the company. No wonder that when it was REALLY time to say goodbye we both cried. When we drove away, I felt so sad.

JulianChristopher and Blkbird both have a special place in my heart. For them I would return to America without a doubt. When I’m writing this, tears are falling down my cheeks. Tears of sadness that I know that I won’t see them for a long time, tears of happiness, that I had the privilege to meet them.

Who could have thought that sending postcards could actually lead to lifelong friendships!

We were wondering what the Little Mail Carriers had been up to lately, when we received this exciting missive all the way from Idaho! Their host lydacher did a thorough job of spoiling the little guys with splendid views and lots of fun activities! If there was any doubt that the Little Mail Carriers have all the fun…

Hello everyone! Late last year we traveled to Idaho, the U.S. state famous for its extensive wilderness areas, winter sports, and… potatoes.

When we arrived, our mail carrier, Jason, drove us in his truck to Old Town Pocatello. Then he walked us up a hill to our host’s house.

Our host Cheryl (aka lydacher) was in the midst of holiday preparations, so we jumped right in to help! The biscotti were divine – but diving in the chocolate chips was one of our favorite parts…

We were welcomed by the dollhouse family and shown to the guest room. As mail carriers, we had no trouble making friends with the family dog.

The next morning, we ventured out into the snow. We’d brought our bicycle, but the snow was too deep, so the dollhouse family loaned us their 4-wheeler.

Wheeeeeee!

Oops! Ouch… Are you ok, Little Paulo? Maybe that’s enough snow for one day…

While we dried our clothes and took a rest, our host gave us some facts about Idaho, which has only 1.5 million people living in an area of 219,887 square kilometres. Much of that area is designated wilderness, where motorized travel is prohibited. Idaho has more miles of rivers than any of the other contiguous U.S. states and several mountain ranges that include at least 9 peaks that are more than 12,000 feet (3.6576 kilometres) above sea level.

To take a break from all the snow, we warmed up in Lava Hot Springs, a short drive out of the city. These pools are fed by natural underground hot springs and are most popular during the winter, when the freezing air meets the 110° Fahrenheit (or 43° Celsius) water and creates an outdoor sauna.

The next morning, we looked through our host’s postcard collection, which she keeps in notebooks and special boxes, filed by country and theme. We learned that she has taught classes about Postcrossing through New Knowledge Adventures, a continuing education program offered by Idaho State University.

She makes children’s mobiles from some of the colorful postcards she receives, and she also made a platform for an electric train for us to ride with our Lego friends – complete with scenic postcards that reflect the views we should see from a real train. How cool is that?! :D

We helped our host select postcards to send and accompanied her to the post office. Postman Rocky sold us stamps and weighed us on his postage scale. Rocky told us that we weigh about the same as a first-class letter!

Bidding Rocky goodbye, we drove back toward the hills on the west side of the city. We’d taken our bicycle along to do some trail-biking… but instead we just sat on a split-rail fence, watching the trains in the valley below us.

The view was just breathtaking!

During the week, we also visited some museums that are uniquely Idaho. The Museum of Natural History at Idaho State University features an exhibit of prehistoric whorl-tooth shark (Helicoprion) fossils found in Idaho.

Idaho is sometimes called the “Potato State, ” owing to its popular and widely-distributed crop. The Idaho Candy Company makes an “Idaho Spud” candy bar that resembles a potato, and there’s even a Potato Museum that houses the world’s largest potato crisp!

We were invited to some holiday parties where we were welcomed by friends of all ages and got to hang out in the decorations!

And of course, we met some Idaho cats. This photo is for all those postcrossers who love cat postcards! :)

Year 2013 is over, and it’s time to bid our host goodbye… Happy New Year 2014 from Idaho!

Thank you so much lydacher for this amazing stay! On they go!

The little guys are currently looking for hosts for the next months, so if you’ve got a camera and some free time to show them around, leave a comment and we’ll get in touch! :)