The story of postcard
The first postcard I ever received was from my Grandma a long long time ago. It was a plate full of tropical fruits, from somewhere that I didn’t even recognise but I remember one thing it left me with a pleasant feeling for days.

I don’t recall who was my first postcard receiver, but I remember sending a postcard from my trip to Borobudur, Jogjakarta and it takes me ages to find a perfect postcard and decide either to send the city view or the Budha picture. Most of the people don’t understand. Some of my friends still asking:
“Who does still send a postcard?”
Apparently according to USPS, in 2018 there are 630,117,000 postcards was send.
Trust me it feels good when you know you’re not alone :)
I agreed we live in the instant world, where everything demanded to be fast. What is the point of sending a postcard? When you could easily take your ‘fancy’ phone camera and within a click away it sends to the outside world?
Not so long ago I read this poster somewhere in Budapest, it said:
“All the good things take time.”
The saying kept looping on my head and linked me right away with how postcard works. The time-frame of sending a postcard is real human speed.
The whole process of sending a postcard was an excitement to me, I’ve made it a practice over the years to send and save dated postcards from my travel. Guessing what this person liking and the important part is the personal message. You don’t need to be a great storyteller, because your handwriting and the postcard picture is worth a thousand words.
Remember, everyone loves to get something in the mailbox!
Let me tell you - there’s something special about opening up your mailbox and finding a postcard.
Key chains, pens, magnets, teddy bears — all sorts of souvenirs are available for tourists everywhere in the world, but for me, postcards are one of a kind.
I personally love to send a second-hand postcard, go to the flea market and hunt down old postcard it’s the best thing I can do instead of bargaining magnets price.
Finding a postcard it is not as difficult as people imagine, museums, trendy cafés, souvenir stores, bookstores, cinemas. The best part is big cities like Berlin and London have free postcards everywhere (although some of them are sponsored or are a subtle form of advertising).
Do you know that the earliest known picture postcard was a hand-painted design on card, posted in Fulham in London by the writer Theodore Hook to himself in 1840?

As Theodore sent a postcard to himself, I did also the same.
The postcard is tangible is like your USB stick, but it won’t get infected by a virus and its collectable. We uploaded pictures on Instagram as a reminder of the best part of the vocation, and postcard do the same!

Imagine you back from your trip. Back to your routine daily life. Having the bad or normal day, as usual, you forget about how wonderful your last trip was and one day you arrive home, received a postcard with your handwriting reminding you how great it was. That’s why postcards are the best souvenirs either for you or others.
I recently join www.postcrossing.com as I realised not all my friends are into postcards ( I forgive you guys).
What is Postcrossing? I would say it is a community and it’s also a project that allows you to send postcards and receive postcards, from random people around the world. That’s real postcards, not electronic!
One morning I was surprised, I got three. Three beautiful postcards from three different places over the world. Crafted messages with pretty handwriting, it just made my day even though the postcard was from people I didn’t know.
I recently received one postcard from seventy-two old lady who lived in Belarus, one of the prettiest handwriting I ever have seen. I have never been there but I think she quite convinced me to visit the country.

I think it’s really inspiring how postcard could challenge you to travel more, and how it does tell you a story.
So I would love to hear from you. Feel free to send me a postcard from your country and tell me something about where you’re from.
