Postal Systems of the World

There's a leap of faith involved for me every time I put a letter in a mailbox or hand a package over to a post office clerk. I love mailing things but I get way too stressed out worrying that it's never going to arrive at its destination. There's so much potential - so many different places along the way - that my letter could get lost. Even though the track record for my mail arriving is very good (the only notable exception being the package I sent to S. in Salt Lake City during my time in Paris, which included a very long letter I spent a long time writing and thinking about, which never arrived; I was (and remain to this day actually) so disappointed it got lost) I never feel completely confident it is going to arrive.

But clearly stressing out over whether my mail is going to arrive doesn't stop me from writing and sending letters/cards/packages, etc. I love post offices. Once I move to a new city, the post office is one of the very first places I find. I don't like post offices as much in Montreal or Toronto though (not sure what they're like in the rest of Canada)because most of them are in Shoppers Drug Marts or card stores. All of the other stuff - especially shampoo, Advil etc. - getting in the way just doesn't feel right; I want them to be purely about the mail.

In the US and France, I'm pretty sure post offices are always only ever post offices and can't be in drug stores. The post office in Berkeley near the campus was always packed - average wait time to get served was probably 30 mins - and I could not go in there without hearing the post office staff yell at at least one of the customers. Finally in my last year living on Hilgard, I clued in to the fact that the North Berkeley post office was way closer to my apt, way less busy, and that the staff did not yell. I lived about a 10 minute walk from a pretty nice post office in Austin. It was often fairly crowded too, but the staff there managed to keep things moving pretty quickly, and never yelled. There was one employee in particular I especially liked, a man with tattoos all over his arms and a gruff - but still nice - manner. He looked more like he belonged in a motor cycle gang than working at the post office, which made me like him even more.

As with cafes, I loved going to post offices all over Paris. There is a 24 hour post office near the Louvre (see picture below). I only ever went there on Sunday afternoons (when all other Paris post offices were closed) but it was nice to know that if I ever desperately needed to mail something at 4 am, I could. (Side note: I wish Toronto had a really big old post office downtown (or even a modern, new post office anywhere in the city) that was open 24 hours. I think a 24 hour post office is a very practical thing to have.)

I always enjoy my walks to the post office, wherever I'm living. Despite my apprehension about the letter getting lost, it feels good to send it off and complete the process I started when I actually wrote the letter/card etc. One of my favourite memories of Santiago is every Sunday writing letters in my favourite cafe, and then every Monday walking to the post office to mail them. The Chilean post was pretty solid but not amazing. One time, I mailed a letter to A. in Berkeley at the same time as a letter to S. in Bordeaux. Unable to find regular scotch tape, I ended up having to buy this weird tape that was sticky on both sides. I used that tape to make sure S.'s letter was sealed properly, and then somehow A.'s letter must have gotten stuck to it either by me when I was paying for the postage, or by the post office worker. In any event, A.'s letter ended up travelling from Santiago to Bordeaux, where S. received both her letter and A.'s. Thankfully, she stuck a French stamp on it and put it in the mail and it eventually reached A. in Berkeley, but it took a very circuitous route! And is a cool story of a letter almost lost...but then not!

Out of all the postal systems I've used, I think England's Royal Mail is the best; it is definitely the fastest. When I was in London once visiting a friend, I sent a little package to my mom and it arrived in 4 days, which is amazing given it often takes 4 days for a letter to get from Montreal to Toronto. La Poste is pretty good too, and I like how in Paris the mailboxes have different slots for Paris, and then the rest of the world, confirming Paris's position as the most important place in the world :) I'm not that impressed with Canada Post. The stamp prices are always going up, it costs A LOT to send packages to the US or France, and its mail delivery is very slow. Plus, I wish they delivered on Saturdays like they do in the States. The US Postal Service is definitely faster, and way cheaper for packages, although stamp prices rise regularly there too. Since it's cheaper to mail packages there (especially since the packages I'm mailing are usually to friends in the States) whenever I go to the States I try to send my packages from a post office there. The last two late falls (December of 2009 in New York City, and late November of 2010 in DC) I've dragged L. to long lined, stressful and tense post offices just so I could mail my packages for cheaper. Our visits in both cities definitely confirmed to me that the post office in Austin is by far the most laid back of all the ones I've been to in the US.

Sometimes I wish that just for a week (I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want it to be my permanent job) I could work in a post office sorting the mail. I'd love to see all the letters and postcards - where they're coming from, where they're going... It would be so fun. But alas, instead I have to content myself with just making sure that I always visit a post office in whatever new country or city I visit.