Jim Eagles: Postcards from the edge

Do people still send postcards in this age of cybergreetings, text messages and roaming mobiles?

I guess they must, to judge from the way vendors everywhere from the Taj Mahal to Petra and from the Great Pyramid of Cheops to the giant bell of Mingun rush up to tourists with handfulls of cards for sale.

I suspect most of them are bought to augment all those photos of out-of-focus landscapes, the ones with close-ups of the photographer's thumb in the right-hand corner, in the trip album.

But if you do buy a postcard intending to send it to a friend there's always a worry about whether the foreign mail services will ensure a speedy and reliable delivery. The evidence on that is decidedly mixed.

Val Grant, of Devonport, is a big fan of postcards and always urges travelling friends to send her one.

It is, she says, always enjoyable to get a postcard from a friend who is visiting an interesting place. "The choice of picture and the succinct message often tell you something new about your friends as well as the places they are visiting."

But she has noted a huge variation in the reliability of delivery.

The best delivery record in recent times, she says, belongs to those stereotypically efficient Germans. A reproduction of a 1910 photo of Koch Verlag posted in Berlin on October 12 reached Devonport on October 19.

Britain's Royal Mail also does well. A postcard-sized reproduction of a landscape in the National Gallery posted in Exeter on October 4 was delivered on October 15.

This had on it a special "worldwide postcard" stamp. "Maybe," says Val hopefully, "someone in England is making it easier to send postcards."

But other countries do not do so well, including our neighbours across the Tasman. "Cards from Australia can be very variable in the time they take to arrive, especially, as one might expect, those from remoter parts."

The Grants recently got a very nice postcard from Poznan in Poland. "Unfortunately it arrived several weeks after our friends returned home, even though they posted it at the beginning of a month-long journey. It took 2 1/2 months to get here.

"And we have yet to receive a card posted five months ago in Istanbul."

They did get a postcard from Argentina in just 10 days "but there was a trick. Our friends put it in an envelope marked 'airmail' in big letters and, having stood in a queue for more than two hours, paid $4 in Argentinian currency for the stamps on the envelope. So, although the speed was good, it can't really be counted as a postcard."

Val's conclusion is that "though it is still easy to find and purchase interesting postcards ... the facilities for posting them are fraught with difficulty.

"And even when one has found where the post office is and queued for stamps, there's no guarantee the postcard will arrive home before you do, or ever."

I have to confess that I rarely send postcards, having long ago tired of the hassle of finding stamps and a post office in a foreign country.

But I also have to admit that it is fun to receive a postcard, especially an unexpected one, from friends travelling in some strange land.

* Do you send postcards? Do they usually arrive? Have you had any problems buying stamps? Do you have any particularly interesting postcards? Send a postcard to The Travel Editor, NZ Herald, PO Box 32, Auckland or email us by clicking the link below.