mailboxes, Germany

Now, this isn't the kind of card I normally post in this blog. ...which I suppose it's a little strange because I really, really like this kind of cards and a lot of my favourite postcards are not view cards. And yet I mainly seem to post view cards here. O_o Anyway, last year I mentioned in a postcard group on Facebook that when I first started Postcrossing, I received a few postcards from Norbert ('Nordbaer') in Germany and really liked them, and that I missed his cards as he's such a wonderful person. Someone relayed my comment to him and I received a postcard from him. :) This is one of the reasons why I love Postcrossing and the postcard community on Facebook. Well, people I "know" anyway. I must confess I'm not too much into the big Postcrossing group on FB. Some people are not very polite there and have strange demands.. ...and the photo proof requests still nark me a little bit, even though I can understand the reasoning behind them. (You never get these requests on the PC forum, though!) I'm actually more drawn towards official Postcrossing again as I've received some really lovely cards recently, and some very nice messages as well. I like the relative spontaneity of it all. I just wish my address didn't keep getting given out too many times. I wonder if that problem is ever going to be fixed as it's been a few years now. It's my main gripe with the official Postcrossing site.

Anyway, mailboxes! These are so bright and lovely, I wonder if they are still in use.. I might have mentioned it before but we don't even have a mailbox, just a slot in the front door.

a tiny post office, North Carolina, USA

This is a slightly older card, received six year ago as an official. I'd been meaning to post it here for ages but something was always playing up with Flickr when I tried. Well, here it is now.

  US-356730   What a cute little post office! It's located in Salvo in North Carolina, USA. The sender told me that it looks more like a child's playhouse and the post mistress is an elderly lady.

Salvo is a census-designated place located in Dare County, North Carolina, on Hatteras Island, part of North Carolina's Outer Banks. Originally (with Rodanthe and Waves) part of the settlement of Chicamacomico, Salvo was originally known as Clarks or Clarksville.

The name "Salvo" allegedly stems from the American Civil War, during which a passing Union vessel spotted the settlement, which was not marked on their maps. The commanding officer ordered an attack, and a sailor marked the site on his map with the word "Salvo." The name was formally given to the town when it received a post office in 1901. The Salvo post office, zip code 27972, one of the smallest postal facilities in the United States, was damaged by an arsonist in 1992. A new post office was constructed later in the decade for all of Chicamacomico. Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 damaged much of the Outer Banks area including Salvo.

Finnish post office

A lovely card I received when I was the winner of the month on the Finnish part of the Postcrossing forum a couple of years ago. I really like illustration by Marjaliisa Pitkäranta and this is one particularly great as it's mail related :)

For some reason this card rather reminds me of my childhood. ...and times when stamps used to be a lot cheaper. :P

The Posting Box, Yockenthwaite, England

I really haven't been too good with this blog recently :/ I'm not even sure where all the time has gone. Some of it has been spent writing letters and postcards to friends, reading and trying to sort out wedding stuff. Not so sure of the rest of it, though, and the pile of cards I want to post about is getting pretty big. Oopsies...

Anyway. In exactly two weeks I'll be in London, attending the International Postcrossing meet-up there (even if it looks like it's going to be slightly less international than was the plan initially, but there should still be people from several different countries attending). I went there last year and had such a good time, it was so nice how everyone was so friendly and welcoming to a newbie like me. I'm really looking forward to meeting some of the same people again, particularly Astrid and Wendy - and Andy (duplevista) who's organising the event again and who also sent me the postcard below two years ago. :)



I had to check Googlemaps for the location of the place on this card - it only says 'Yockenthwaite' on the back of the card and I'd never heard of the place again. It looks like it's in the middle of nowhere and yep, it is, in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales. Mmmmm, I do wonder whether this mailbox is emptied regularly.. Much as I keep complaining about the Royal Mail, at least they still provide a regular service for the whole of the UK. I'm not so sure what would happen if the postal services were privatised (apart from stamp prices probably going up quite a bit)...



The stamp is from a set of 8 stamps issued in 2009, with the theme 'Pioneers of the Industrial Revolution'. The one here shows James Watt, a strong contender for the title of father of the steam age because of his years of hard work in improving the Newcomen design created a ‘steam engine’.

postman, Thailand

Oopsies. I didn't mean to take almost a month before updating this blog again. Somehow it just... happened. I've been reading (loved 'The Time Traveler's Wife' by Audrey Niffenegger, heartily recommended, and now I'm reading 'The Angel's Game' by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, here's hoping it's as good as 'The Shadow of the Wind'), writing letters, crocheting, writing in my paper journal, doing aikido, and I've discovered zines and have been reading them a lot, too.

Anyway. I have a big bunch of cards I want to post about here now. It's probably going to take a while before I get everything sorted. I thought I'd start with this lovely official from Thailand that I received a while ago. I love mail related postcards, and it's interesting seeing postmen around the world.


TH-57201

This postcard shows a Thai postman and a hanging post box during King Rama V period, about 100 years ago.



Nice stamps, too, I couldn't find any info on them though so all I know is that they were both issued earlier this year. The bigger one commemorates the centenary of the demise of King Rama V.

Novel Mail Box Trail, Tasmania, Australia

It's always a treat to receive mail-related postcards, and I particularly love seeing different mailboxes around the world. I kind of wish we had a cool mailbox at home, too, but we just have a slot in the door. :/ Most of the really interesting mailboxes I've seen are from the USA, but here are some all the way from Australia!


AU-86156

There is a really quirky "Novel Mail Box Trail" in the Wilmot Valley in Tasmania, Australia. These pictures show just a few of the unique mailboxes in the area (I did a bit of googling on the subject and saw some really cool mailboxes!). No wonder these mailboxes are a great tourist attraction!