I have opposite experience; the more person I get from a country the more I realized there is that I don’t know. It’s like my understanding of how much more there is, grows. Like in any subject or life in general, the more I learn, the more I know that I don’t actually know much at all A country, and knowing it, when does it stop? A country is not a stable object, the situation there changes, people have different backgrounds, views, dreams… A German member recently wrote about their worries, and how they are limited in buying flour, they never had experienced it in their life, so I think there is something new one can learn about each country every day. Because some situations are new to them too. Also, when sending, I think about more it’s sharing my life, so it’s not that important where it goes.
If your goal is to collect as many countries as possible, then the direct swaps is good, like others suggested. Then you can choose the country. But to me sounds like you’d prefer an easy way, countries “given” to you and a little accusative when it doesn’t happen like you want. But it’s like many collections, easy to start, but gets harder the more you got.
Maybe also good thing would be, before you draw an address, don’t hope for a rare place, but think, if it’s German, Finland, Russia, will you be happy writing to them? If not, take a break. Don’t drawn an address then. If it’s not fun to you, it might be readable in your cards too. Why make yourself unhappy and maybe the receiver too?
After all I hope it was just bad moment! And some day soon you will be happy writing cards again <3
23.9% of your cards are going to Germany. 3 out of 5 would be 60%. Your math is off. So you draw about the same number (or less) of German addresses as everybody else. (Mine is 23.1% sent to Germany.)
I am also confused as to why you don’t turn off repeated countries to solve your own perceived problem.
By the way, to all the German Postcrossers out there, I love you and really enjoy sending and receiving postcards from the wonderful people on your country.
Reading these comments over and over again makes me really sad. When I started postcrossing, I never thought I’d have a guilty conscience because people might be disappointed just because of my country.
Also, it’s kind of weird to get upset about that issue when you are literally coming from a country with a lot of members itself. It feels like every second card of mine goes to the USA or Russia. Which, by the way, I’ve never been upset about.
But since Germany seems to be the explicit disappointment, I also want to make it clear that written messages are extremely deeply rooted in German culture. The postcard and industrially printed paper are downright German inventions. So I’m assuming that the number of members from Germany will not decrease in the future either. So if you want to keep getting upset about it, I hope you like disappointment.
Interesting thing is I haven’t sent much to Germany but received 3 times more from it. I like postcards to/from Germany because I can write/read in German which I don’t do much otherwise. What is more amazing that I’ve sent one card less to Japan than to Germany, though Japan has much less postcrossers.
I have noticed I get a bit more Germany now, which is fine with me.
As mentioned a while ago, I have the opposite concern that Florida isn’t ‘exotic enough’ to some people dreaming of less well-known states like Delaware or North Dakota.
I’m happy with any country that I send/receive but I will say that I love our members in Germany! As someone who enjoys funny cards, I can always count on our members there to send me a laugh. Not to mention all the other kinds of cards received.
Like any other active country, the variety is vast & entertaining! So many different people from different walks of life. How could that ever be repetitive?
Same with me. I would LOVE to send more cards to Germany but sadly I get very few German addresses. Looking at my stats, my received cards from Germany always vary between 30 and 40%. I guess there must be a correlation between sent and received cards in the algorithm. Once I tried to even things out by switching the repeated countries option on but I only got Russia and at the end I was completely blocked since I only have 10 slots so far and I switched it off
Recently I got two German addresses and waited until they arrived hoping to get a new German address. Well, I got Denmark and UK, which is weird because I already had one postcard traveling to UK. So the algorithm rather chose to give me a second address of the same country than Germany e.g.
Well there are lots of German postctossers and they are very active thanks to cheap postage. So there is a lot of postcards coming from Germany and of course also going to Germany
The popular countries change over time by the way. When I started Postcrossing Finland and the Netherlands were the strong countries! Maybe in the future China will become the most common country, who knows
I’ve had a busy week, and haven’t had the chance to get many cards out, so I was determined to catch up this morning. I had 14 available slots, and I pulled the addresses one at a time, filled out the card then pulled the next address. Based on the postcrossing ID numbers, 230 cards (including mine) were written during that time. I know at least 3% of those went to Germany, as they went there from me. Here’s where I pulled addresses for, in order:
Germany
Japan
Germany
USA
Germany
USA
Germany
Taiwan
USA
Germany
USA
Germany
USA
Germany
So - 7 to Germany, 5 to USA, 1 to Japan and 1 to Taiwan. I know the Germans have lots of cards out there and thus are owed a lot, and at 5 addresses pulled here we in America weren’t that far behind them. Still, with almost every other card going to Germany, this jumped out at me. No doubt thee are many factors affecting the complexity of the algorithm that picks the next address for me, including that we in the U. S can’t send to Russia right now. Still this seemed a bit excessive.
Well, I took seven German addresses and 5 USA addresses off the list, so hopefully the folks who were pulling addresses around me got some other countries! In the end, it’s all good. I think the cards I send to Germany also have one of the highest registration rates, so I’ve got that going for me!
Well, the postal service has become expensive and bad in many countries. I suppose this made many postcrossers in such countries reduce their activity or even give up and that would also reduce the diversity.
A country, and knowing it, when does it stop? A country is not a stable object, the situation there changes, people have different backgrounds, views, dreams… A German member recently wrote about their worries, and how they are limited in buying flour, they never had experienced it in their life, so I think there is something new one can learn about each country every day. Because some situations are new to them too. Also, when sending, I think about more it’s sharing my life, so it’s not that important where it goes.
I like postcards to/from Germany because I can write/read in German which I don’t do much otherwise. What is more amazing that I’ve sent one card less to Japan than to Germany, though Japan has much less postcrossers.
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