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!

This month’s prompt comes from candyflosscurls on the forum! Many countries have their own wise sayings and proverbs, and sometimes they’re a fascinating reflection of the culture or of stories that other countries don’t share. So this month, we’re suggesting you share those!

I must admit that I had to turn to Google for this. I don’t actually speak Welsh, and didn’t grow up in Wales… and it’s hard to know what English proverbs might be unusual or interesting for other people, knowing how widespread proficiency in English can be! So it was from Wales Online that I found this one: “Bwrw hen wragedd a ffyn”. It literally means (according to my very basic Welsh and Google Translate) “casting old wives and sticks”, but Wales Online translated it as “it’s raining old wives and walking sticks”. I guess that’s a variation on “it’s raining cats and dogs”, but it sounds a bit more cantankerous. Mind you, the Welsh certainly know rain! There’s a joke I’ve told about both Wales and where I live now in Yorkshire: there are three states of weather here: it’s either raining, it’s just rained, or it’s about to rain.

I can think of some lovely words of Welsh I actually know, if that might count! “Hiraeth” is the word for an intense homesickness or longing, specifically for one’s home in Wales. Obviously that’s a word that served my family well, living up in Yorkshire! But my favourite is the word “cwtch”, which I use fairly often. It means a hug or cuddle, but “cwtch” also means cupboard, a safe place to put things… so when you offer someone a cwtch, you’re offering them both a hug and a safe place. It’s such a warm word!

So that’s my contribution! What about you? Can you think of any proverbs or sayings from your country that might be interesting to share? If so, we’d love to hear about them in the comments, but you can also use that as a prompt if you’re not sure what to write on your postcards!

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!

This month, we’ve chosen a prompt from a forum post by esca0417 which really piqued our interest. We all have special topics that we know a lot about, from postcards to trains to almost anything else you can imagine… but what are the topics that you don’t yet know about, the ones where you’d love to learn everything and become an expert? What would you pick?

For me, it’s really difficult to choose… I have so many interests I know a little about, and I’d love to know more about any one of them. Some have been preoccupations since childhood (Ancient Egypt and dinosaurs), and some are more recent (the history of fabrics and food, for instance). And for me, the journey is half the fun, so I wouldn’t choose to skip to the end of my degree and be an expert in epidemiology right now!

I think in the end I’d choose something that gives me a chance to learn even more about something that I already find interesting—I’d love to become an expert in Egyptian hieroglyphs, so that I can actually read ancient inscriptions for myself. I’m not great at learning languages or deciphering visual things, so in this case I’d really appreciate the boost of a magic wish to become an expert overnight.

Of course, now I’ve picked something, I can think of a dozen other subjects I’d love to become an expert in… maybe I’ll write about some of those on the postcards I send this month! If you’re not sure what to write on your own postcards this month, maybe you can do the same? We’d love to see your ideas about what you’d become an expert in here in the comments, as well!

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!

Here in Britain, it’s still cool and rainy at the time of year we’d normally be expecting to start seeing the sun. That means it’s a great time to start thinking about bringing a little positivity into things! This month, we thought it’d be nice to write to one another about the things that make us smile.

I’m pretty lucky in that I have three reasons to smile just running around my flat making nuisances of themselves, day in and day out. That’d be my bunnies—Hulk, the eldest, and then the twins, Eclair and Biscuit. They like to be petted and cuddled, they like to doze in a nice cosy spot, they like to check out what exactly it is the humans are doing on the computer… and best of all, they like getting treats.

Yes, Hulk, I did say the word treat!

The last thing to make me smile was exactly that: I was having my morning banana, and Hulk was begging so intently for it (bunnies often love sugary treats like fruit) that I gave her a tiny little bit. That would make me smile on its own, but even better was the fact that she was so happy, her back-end started kind of twitching… You can find videos of this behaviour on YouTube from other bunny owners, though I’ve never grabbed a camera in time to catch Hulk! It looks weird at first, but it’s something they only do when they’re super happy, and of course that made me happy too.

We’d love to hear about the last thing that made you smile, both via comments on this post and on your postcards this month!

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!

Right now, we know that most postcrossers are stuck at home, and postcards are helping everyone travel during quarantine restrictions and lockdown… so this month, we thought it might be nice to chat about our dream holidays—whether that involves traveling or not! This topic was suggested by canchita on the forum.

I’m a little bit of a homebody. My longest journeys are all fictional: to Fairyland, Middle-Earth, Mars, Eorzea, the past and the future. When I do travel, my first thought is to look up whether our destination has a good bookshop. There are a few locations on my holiday list solely because I’ve heard good things about a bookshop or two, like St. Georges in Berlin, and the Globe Bookstore and Café in Prague.

That said, I can also go for a good museum, and I’ve been recommended the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin: I’m curious about their mounted Brachiosaurus skeleton, and they actually house the first ever Archaeopterix fossil as well! Maybe we’ve got our answer here: it’s starting to sound like my ideal holiday is to Berlin, someday, when everything’s safe.

We’d love to hear more about your ideal holiday, whether it involves soaking up some sun or climbing a tricky mountain… or just figuring out how many books you can fit in your suitcase on the way home. You can share in the comments here, and on the cards you send this month!

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!

Do you remember the books that you read when you were a child? For many people, these are the books that have stuck with them their whole lives—or books which still raise a smile now when you see the artwork or spot the books in a shop. They can be very specific to your country, or books which cross borders… so we thought it would be nice to prompt everyone to talk about those childhood books.

I’ve always been a big fan of reading, from the days when my parents would have to read me to sleep, to reading The Hobbit by torchlight so my parents wouldn’t catch me reading at night, to my endless quest through all kinds of books now. One of the very first books I remember is one no one else seems to remember: There’s A Hippopotamus On Our Roof Eating Cake by Hazel Edwards! I always loved hippos, and this book is part of why. The hippo eats cake when he likes and nobody tells him what to do—hmm, I wonder what appealed to me as a child!

As I learned to read myself, I loved reading the classic childhood choices like Enid Blyton, Edith Nesbit and Roald Dahl, and though I was very quick to move onto my mum’s bookshelves (where I found Isaac Asimov and David Eddings and started a lifelong love of fantasy and sci-fi), I also remember being keen on grabbing the next Animorphs book each time one came out!

How about you? Do you have any strong memories of the books you read as a child? Maybe you can even get postcards with the characters on, if you were a fan of characters like Nijntje (Miffy), Winnie-the-Pooh and the Moomins… This month, why don’t you share about about those childhood favourites with the people you write to on Postcrossing? We’d love to hear about them in comments, as well, especially the ones unique to your country!