I, like many of you, consider myself cosmopolitan – I like to travel, I love new acquaintances from many countries, I like souvenirs. And I really like to receive postcards from different countries – with greetings written on them by hand, with unusual stamps and other steep pieces. Today I will tell you about postcrossing – a service for exchanging postcards.
The most difficult thing in exchanging postcards is to get the address of the person who really needs your postcard and who is ready to send it to you in return. Previously, for such purposes, forums were used and even special books were published, now everything is much simpler.
You just need to register on the Postcrossing website. After registration, you will have to write a few words about yourself and indicate your mailing address – you will receive postcards on it. Immediately after registration, you will receive five addresses selected from the project database in random order – five of the most diverse addresses from anywhere in the world. At these addresses you will need to send postcards. As you already know, one of the users of the project will get your address. Of course, the service is completely free.
To each address is attached a postcrossing code, which, for example, has this kind: RU-727145 (where RU is Russia, and 727145 is a special code). When your recipient finds a postcard in the soy box, he will enter the code on the site and confirm receipt. You can find out how long your postcard has gone and what path it has done, as well as send one more (at the initial stage on the road there can be no more than five postcards).
In case the postcard does not reach for a long time, it goes into the Expired status and is soon “removed from the balance”, so you will not suffer from a decrease in the number of received and sent postcards.
Sending cards is best without an envelope, but simply sticking on it a sufficient number of stamps (for Russia it is 22 rubles) and dropping into a box – many very appreciate postage stamps. On the post card you can write anything, the main thing is not to forget the code.
Despite the fact that the whole idea seems mediocre enough, postcrossing is an incredibly fun way to communicate with interesting people from around the world. Often simple “open” contacts develop into real friendship. Well, in general, postcards are a real way to understand that we live in the real world, and not in the Matrix.
Here you can see the postcards I received in a year.
