To open my mailbox like someone opening a surprise box and to feel the pleasure of discovery unleashed by an envelope decorated with stamps.
To be part of the world and also to discover it this way, with the help of those who share this vision.

Tuesday 20 July 2021

POSTCARD N.13 - Austria
Postcrossing postcard posted on the 14th July; received on the 20th July
Potscard image: Celebrating Postcrossing 
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I only came across Postcrossing after I started this humble blog of mine, about three months ago. But as many a believer in the power simple things have to make a better world and to bridge differences and create common grounds, I joined the moment I took notice of it.

In fact, writing someone you don't know a simple postcard is much more than a hobby or a way to fill in some free time. It is an act of citizenship, of welcoming, of culture, much the same as reaching out or lending a hand. 

When I started this blog I wrote that I was doing it because I missed finding correspondence in my mailbox; i missed the pleasure of seeing an envelope with an handwritten address, my address, on it, with the promise of news from someone I knew or knew not, mundane as they might be, therein inscribed, in a sheet of handwritten paper.

I knew at heart that there had to be  a great many people who felt much the same way I did, but where were they?

I wasn't looking for friends. I know how elusive the notion of "friend" can be when perceived against the backdrop of an electronic application or the vast wasteland of social media. I guess I was looking for humanity nodes; synaptic points of interconnection with my own species.

And Postcrossing proved to be just the right tool to achieve this goal, making it possible to turn my mailbox into a library of Man. With each postcard I receive, my world simply grows bigger, wider, more knowledgeable.

To learn that such a brilliant idea originated in the mind of a fellow countryman,  and that it grew up to be the amazing platform we now profit from, is inspirational and a mailbox opened into the future...


Anita, whom I thank,  sent me this terrific card, issued, just as it reads, to celebrate the issuing of a second postcrossing themed stamp by the Austrian Post (the first one having been issued in 2016)


The 1,00€ stamp is cancelled with the first day of issue postmark, dated of 14JUL2021, and was sent from Vienna

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