Stockholm School of Economics in Riga Students' Magazine

Remember those times when people used to write letters? And I mean real ones, not e-mails. Wouldn’t you like to experience it once again? When messages are personal and show the author's effort instead of some electronic data sent through servers or messengers? Of course, since student life is very hectic, there is no time to write a decent letter of 4 or 5 pages (well, at least that’s the average length that I have experienced in snail mailing).

So, to my mind, Postcrossing is a perfect solution for people who want to experience multicultural communication and who lack time. Not only can you read short messages from people all over the world, but you also get an insight into different cultures through seeing views on postcards. Famous national buildings, beautiful nature landscapes, cute domestic animals or the ones which are specific to that country only, or just something with a nice phrase. Of course, it is not the same as to see such objects in reality, but it definitely brings joy.

 

The system look complicated in the very beginning, but it’s easy once you get accustomed to it. First of all, go to the website www.postcrossing.com and register there. Secondly, request to send a postcard. The website will provide you with an address of another member and a Postcard ID. You send a postcard to that person. He or she receives the postcard and registers it using the Postcard ID that is on the postcard. Now some other member will get your address and send you a postcard. One might have questions why the system has so many steps and details, but everything is in order to keep the balance between how many postcards you send and how many you receive. Postcrossing is based on equivalent trade - you get as much as you give. The funny part is that you have no idea from which country you will get a postcard until you actually receive it.

 

You can add into your profile a description of yourself and your interests or preferences for postcards. It is not a rule to send postcards based on what that person likes, but quite many Postcrossing users are willing to put some effort and look for a postcard which would please you. Also, in Postcrossing you can upload your sent or received postcards to gallery. What is more, some users like to make original postcards themselves.One drawback about Postcrossing is that quite often you get postcards from several repeating countries. Basically, it is because that country has many more active users (sending many more postcards) than other countries. Such countries are the USA, Finland, the Netherlands, and Germany (at least, from what I‘ve encountered so far).

 

As for my personal opinion, I can say that Postcrossing gave me a lot of joy, excitement and some multicultural experience. Almost every morning I used to run to check my pigeon box at school :) It is always nice to see that a completely unknown person puts his or her heart in writing a sincere message on the back of the postcard or picks your favorite scenery or object. I even still keep a contact with one of users from Japan :) So, I would like to encourage you to at least try Postcrossing, since it's definitely something unusual and worth giving a shot :)

Egle Vaskeviciute

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