Post Crossing

While not directly travel related, I have come across a cool website that promotes worldwide communication, one postcard at a time! And while I may not be able to visit every country on earth, I may be able to get a postcard from a great deal of them. The concept is simple:

1. request an address from the website
2. mail the postcard to the address
3. wait to receive a postcard
4. register the received postcard in the system

Why would someone do this, you might ask? The Post Crossing website sums it up nicely, "The element of surprise of receiving postcards from different places in the world (many of which you probably have never heard of) can turn your mailbox into a box of surprises - and who wouldn't like that?"

If I can receive mail that doesn't include a payment envelope inside, on a regular basis, I'm all for it! After all, isn't that why our grandmothers subscribed to all those quaint catalogs?

When you start out, you're limited to sending five postcards at a time. That way if you fail to send any, you aren't stringing along more than 5 people into thinking that they'll be receiving a card. After all, it used to suck as a kid to participate in a chain letter amongst your friends only to find out that no one else participated!

So far, I've sent five postcards. My recipients include a family in Croatia, university student in Taiwan, a website content manager in Moscow, a young stamp collector in India, and a female government retiree in Rhode Island who enjoys gardening and travelling (she's touring Switzerland and Italy this month). How exciting that I could learn about their interests and hobbies through a postcard.

I realize a postcard is a rather restrictive format in which to forge new bonds with other humans on our planet, but maybe that's to our benefit. After all, who wants to pen their life story for some random person far far away? (Probably the same crazies who keep a blog about their travels, stupid!)

In any case, I find the process cool, and have already begun to admire the postcards of others. The university guy in India is into FDCs. I had no clue what that was, other than an acronym for a fire department connection, and I figured that wasn't what he was into. First Day Covers are envelopes upon which postage stamps have been cancelled on their first day of issue. He keeps a blog, similar to mine, where he scans and uploads the images of letters (FDCs) mailed to him by other collectors. I was amazed at the different styles of envelopes, stamps, and cancellation marks from the various countries. Some were postcards from the US, sent from places I'd never seen or heard of.

I post all this in hopes that I will be able to share some of the cool cards I receive. I also hope that mentioning this cool website may offer a neat opportunity for my friends and family with kids in the home. I recall as a kid that receiving mail and packages from my older cousins and aunt and uncles was the greatest thing ever. According to the scrolling list of recently received postcard fronts (backs are never shown to keep addresses confidential), many participants are groups rather than individuals. It appears as though elementary school classes are participating, as evidenced by "Mrs. Smith's 4th Period Class" as a user name. This would be an awesome tool for school-aged kids to learn world geography!

If you're interested in reading more about Post Crossing, their website is: www.postcrossing.com