Every afternoon I unlock the mini-door of my mailbox and a pile of paper filth cascades into my hands; Advertisement bills and colorful leaflets flutter out into the vast sky for the last time before they’re all unceremoniously trashed for recycling on Saturday morning. Cleaning and sorting everything up, I curse in a mixture of three languages as politicians all over the world invest trillions in environmental research.
Safely in my apartment, I continue the fury-filled segregation of gas bills from weight loss ads (“At 50 kg, Mari was ashamed to face her colleagues at work but after completing our program, even the boss can’t keep his eyes off her 39.9 kg figure!”) and my sorting gets even more violent. Smug Mari goes down to 15 kg as her photo is ripped in half.
That’s when a bent and crumpled postcard frees itself from the suffocating slush of paper pooling around my feet. Actual handwritten words smile up at me shyly as a vibrant stamp glimmers in the light. Stunned, I drop everything and dive for it, my eyes drinking in every letter stroke.
Hello, friend, it reads, Greetings from Russia! My name is Vitya and I’m a student in Moscow! I hope you are well. Here’s a card for you showing you our most famous…..
My irritation with the world dissolves in a heartbeat and instead of Tokyo, I’m in Russia. Standing next to 23-year-old Vitya as a glossy blue-orange sun falls over the peaked ridges and snowy veins of the Ural Mountains, he tells me that his favorite subject at University is Architecture and he goes hiking in his free time, or tries out craft beer. He ends the message with a polite invitation for me to visit Russia for real and signs off by showing me how my name looks in Cyrillic script.
Standing with that strange, beautiful gift of a stranger’s life in a lonely hallway, I forget everything else weighing down my mind.
Maybe my mailbox isn’t a godforsaken cesspool after all…
***
My dear reader, do you secretly long for the overly-romanticized experience of selecting the perfect postcard amongst countless pieces in a souvenir store, the sensation of smooth ink grinding against the paper as you draft out a heartfelt message, and the feeling of anticipation as you drop the stamped piece of your heart to be propelled across the world by the goodwill of faceless strangers? All the while knowing that a similar gift could be on its way to you? In a cyber world of impersonal greetings and automated emails from bots, a postcard meant just for you is no less than a treasure, isn’t it?
If you answered with a resounding yes, Postcrossing is the hobby you never knew you needed. It’s a worldwide internet-and-paper project where members create an account and register to randomly receive addresses of other members to whom they can send postcards, matched by common languages. Once an address is received, you, the sender, can view your recipient’s profile, the kind of postcards they would enjoy receiving and any preferred messages. You might get requests for a brief weather report, a local proverb, or perhaps a sentence in your native language. You write your postcard and post it off to your recipient. Once its arrival is confirmed, your address is given to another member so that you can have your turn at receiving a postcard from just about anywhere in the world, creating a suspense filled human-chain of paper trails. You can send up to five postcards as a new member, and the number increases as you become a more active part of the community. To join the project is completely free (apart from your future postage costs, of course) and there are no deadlines to meet so that the experience can be enjoyed without pressure.
The system may be a little confusing and complicated at first, but you quickly settle into a routine. A computer issued code is given to each sender and must be written on every postcard so that recipient can register it online after arrival, hence allowing you to receive a postcard from yet another member. This digital confirmation might feel like too much of a modern touch, but truly allows you to experience the best of both worlds. The website acts like a social network where you can shoot off thank-you emails to senders for their cards, make new friends, or privately negotiate direct exchanges of collectible items like coins, stamps, limited edition goods and so on. For those who might feel nervous about having their address out there in the vast net, investing in a PO Box is a helpful suggestion.
Postcrossing was nothing less than a life saving experience for me at a time when I needed a reminder that the world of millions of unvisited places, people and possibilities were far more powerful than my inconsequential worries. Through it, a German mother told me a local fairytale, an American wife talked about her Bible study class, a Turkish boy confessed that he wasn’t too fond of Mathematics, and an Australian student sent a card from his country to mine just to tell me that his favorite food was sausages with peas. The cards were stained by inky fingers, blurred by melted snow, crumbly from desert sand or bent by hurried transit staff. My floor turned into a human atlas of experiences. Some people really went out of the way to fit the themes I mentioned liking and I soon ended up with an eclectic mixture of postcards that depicted everything from Gothic Cathedrals to local cakes.
Getting back to the basics was relatively easy for me as a 90’s kid but some younger friends I introduced to Postcrossing needed a little more…..guidance:
“I’ve written to the Spanish girl and Taiwanese man!” the youngster declares, running out with the two postcards held high, “How do we even send them?”
“You go to the post office and let them weigh the card and they’ll tell you how much to pay,” I explain, pulling out my wallet, “And then you’ll get some stamps to use on-“
“Stamps are the tiny paper squares stuck on envelopes all the time, right?”
We stare at each other.
A last fact: The art of collecting postcards is called Deltiology and after you join Postcrossing, feel free to add #deltiologist to every new photograph you take of your rapidly growing collection.
So, find yourself a pen, a card and let the world tours begin! Here you go:
Happy Postcrossing!