Hi! Early in November I’ll go on a mini cruise from Denmark via the Faroe Islands to Iceland and back. Since they are all rare countries on postcrossing I’d love to send postcards from there. But I see three problems and hope someone here has experience with a similar situation:
Is it possible to receive only addresses that aren’t in cyrillic, chinese, japanese… letters while in travel mode? Because I won’t have access to a printer.
I want to request the addresses while being on the ship somewhere on the ocean because I want to write while we are on sea (assuming that I can buy country specific postcards on the ship) so I can send the postcards when I’m in a harbour. But after reading the FAQ I’m assuming that won’t work. How close do I need to be to a specific country for the request to work? Or won’t it work at all because the ship’s WiFi is probably registered to one country and won’t change depending on our location?
Is there a limit on how often I can change my location within a week?
I’m quite pessimistic at the moment for the whole thing to work but maybe someone knows a solution
You would have to access wifi in each specific country (to verify that you are actually there). I’m not sure if that is possible while on board the cruise.
I have tried this while traveling on from Oslo to Kiel, but since the wifi on board is a Norwegian wifi, it was not possible to set my travel mode to Germany.
With regard to the addresses, you cannot exclude countries with cyrilic addresses. Whenever I got such addresses in travelmode, I have just written the address in latin letters and hope that is enough (which it usually is, but might take longer time).
You have to be on the wi-fi of the country, so it can’t work.
Maybe I shouldn’t say this out loud, but the postcrossing team can change it manually (I know they do that for those travelling to the Vatican) if you tell them in advance. But I don’t know if they can do it multiple times (like, if you tell them, from day x to day z I’m in this country, then from day z to day y in this other place… Maybe you can’t do a sequence like that).
In normal circumstances, I don’t see why there would be a limit to how many times you can change, let’s say you bounce between borders every few days and have local wi-fi every time, there shouldn’t be a problem.
Also I imagine you have many stops in each country, so you’d get postcards and stamps at one stop, and post them at the next?
Oh, about the addresses in other characters: I don’t have a printer, at all. I don’t see any difference in using the Latin characters, which are always provided.
You can try to find a local wifi in the harbour/tourist shop/post office in each of the places. Those are countries where I would expect public wifi to be widely available.
I haved cruised in the Caribbean and sent postcards from multiple countries. I go on land, find a local WIFI and request an address. Buy a local postcard and stamp and just settle at a table in a restaurant to write the postcard. It takes just a couple of minutes.
You can print out a bit of info about your vacation in advance, and stick that onto the postcard you are sending out.
I think in Iceland it should be possible to find local WiFi and write the postcards there (I’ll be there for 2 days, both filled with excursions but not around the clock obviously). On the Faroe Islands it could be more difficult because we’ll only have two rather short stops there which will be spent with excursions but since the ship is faroese maybe their WiFi is, too.
So I’ll just wait and see what works
That’s really good to know. So far I’ve always printed those out because I thought they would travel way too long or don’t reach their destination at all if I write the address in latin letters.
But if you mail your letters, I guess you’ll put them in a mailbox on earth right? So on that occasion, you can click on “send a postcard”, right? Actually, I just see that it’s more or less @Petre’s experience. Or maybe I missed something…
As for the addresses in Cyrillic alphabet or Chinese ideograms, personally I don’t have a printer, and so that it arrives more quickly, I copy manually. For the moment, all my cards have arrived safely
Anyway, enjoy your cruise!
You manually write the addresses in foreign alphabets? That’s very impressive! I don’t think I’m that talented but since others said they also arrive when they are written in the Latin alphabet I stopped worrying about that part.
I have written postcards from a cruise in January. We’ve been in two harbours in Portugal. At the first stop I got into WiFi and asked for addresses, bought postcards and stamps. While on the ship I wrote them and at the next stop I put them in the letterbox. You could do so in iceland. Often there is a letterbox in the harbour building.
Have fun!
When you disembark head to a cafe and use their wifi to pull addresses, then go card shopping and to the post office! Or just pull addresses before you leave, write & send cards as you travel. People will enjoy the cards and stamps regardless of registration code
My mother in law had a very bad experience with that, she was cruising the Canary Islands i.e. Spain i.e. Europe so believed it would be in her phone bundle (roaming is free of charge in EU countries). Turns out she got connected to the transmission pole that the ship had itself which connected to a satellite, so she did get an unpleasant surprise afterwards
But probably if you have this case, you are also not able to get into travel mode for the right country as well
Many people do that, I also thought it was crazily brave but I started to do it with Chinese and everything has arrived. I know Cyrillic well so I have no issues with that, sometimes if there’s only the Latin version I write it in Cyrillic anyway unless I’m unsure of something. It is my firm belief that it doesn’t improve travel time or chances for registration at all - I had an insane amount of cards lost or taking months to Russia (you could argue my Cyrillic is bad but I get complimented often enough about the Russian on the actual message, so it can’t be that bad.) (Sorry a bit off topic).
Actually, a lot of people complain about the id not matching the card/stamp so it’s not that easy, sadly.
I asked a Japanese friend about getting the kanji strokes exactly correct (perfect), she replied “No, don’t worry about it, we can figure out what you meant to write!”
Interestingly, I don’t remember ever seeing an address in Japanese on postcrossing. Every time I sent to Japan it was in English only. I took a class of Japanese years ago but we only started the kanji so I don’t know how to write, but even learning a little bit made me more confident about writing that kind of characters
But yeah, I guess it is possible to get it even if not perfectly written.
That’s very impressive! I don’t think I’m that talented 
but since others said they also arrive when they are written in the Latin alphabet I stopped worrying about that part.