I'm still waiting for a package that was mailed in August from Holland. DS was visiting there in April/May and he left a couple of things there. Girlfriend said she would pack up and mail and she kept forgetting. So finally she mails it and who knows where it is.
I have had surface mail (box, package, whatever you call it, but bigger than a letter) take 3 months between the US and Europe (EU) on several occasions - both directions too.
Some times it gets temporarily lost. I once filled in these humongous forms for lost mail, to help USPS try to trace it. One week later, one packet arrived in DK, then a month later I got mail from USPS saying that they had traced it all the way to the receipient (I know they had not been in touch with the recepient, not had the Danish mail). For the packet, I got a letter from USPS saying that the recipient had not bothered to reply to their queries (via Danish mail) - I also know this is not true. Finally, about 3 weeks after I got that letter, the last packet arrived in Denmark. who knows where they got stuck, but I never did use that post office again...
Maybe you could ask the GF to put a trace on the package? Twice I have made decisions to go "next time I'm of while the PO is open" and then the package arrives. The power of thought...
Hanne in London
- who has too much experience with international mail
Well Cindy,
It's quite amaizing what post offices are like in other countries..although I'm sure the post office in Holland is not like my experience I'm about to share....
In the summer of 1996, I worked in Irvine, California and was sent to work for a week in Ecuador, South America. Since I was alone on this trip, I decided to write out post cards for everyone I knew...I sent out about 40 of them. Paid the postage and all. (That took a LONG time...)
One night, I was eating at one of the restaurants in the hotel when the executive chef came out to greet me personally. He said he was told that I spoke good english by the waiter and the chef was curious where I came from. I told him I was from Ontario Canada, but was working a few months in California...etc.. Turned out he was from just a few hours away from my home town in Canada and asked me if I would do him a favor. He said he went to Ecuador 7 years ago to get experience as a chef, but ended up falling in love with someone and got married and now has two kids. He has been trying to get legal documents out of the country to Canada so he can get Canadian citizenship for this kids. He said if he posted them in the mail, they would never make it out. Then he asked me if I would post the envelope in the US for him when I got back. He left the envelope open for me to see it was all legal and nothing..."funny". I felt comfortable with him and decided to do it. He gave a $20US bill to cover the postage and I made sure that I posted it when I got back and got a tracking number and everything. I had left him my parents telephone number before I left Ecuador, and about
4 months later, my mom got a call with a message saying "Thank you for posting my letter...it arrived safely to the Gov. of Canada. I really appreciated what you did for me."At the time, I was still somewhat skeptical, but felt like he was desperate and was waiting for the right person to come by..I was it. I'm so glad I did what I did, because almost 10 years later......
not one of my 40 postcards that I sent from Ecuador EVER made it out of Ecuador and back to Canada for anyone to read.
Life is never boring when your me...I've got lots more stories that I will share with you over time...that is....if you found this one interesting...
So, Cindy, unless she posted that parcel in 1996, please have hope that i will arrive..someday. Me? I'm still somewhat hopeful that SOMEDAY, someone will get one of those postcards and it will make a wonderful addition to my story.
My brother, bless him, kept putting "Scotland" as the country in the last line in my address. My post from him to me kept getting sent to Samoa out in the Pacific Ocean. That's because I live in the United Kingdom, and political aspirations and a separate Parliament apart, you really do need to write United Kingdom on my post. The "S" in the USPS alphabet before wherever Scotland would be, were it to be a separate nation, is obviously Samoa. On another occasion, I had a big order (at least 2 or 3 big, stuffed Global Priority envelops) go walkabout. Months passed. Finally, Julie at Bighornquilts (it was from their shop) credited my account and I ordered something else. Weeks later, the order showed up, back at Bighorn. We never did figure out where it had been all that time. If only parcels could talk! (or at least meow).
-- Jo in Scotland
I did something similar. When I was an exchange student in Irkutsk, in 1990, my host father was an astrophysicist and was trying to hook up with scientists in Japan for some sort of conference. He was afraid that written correspondence would never make it out of the Soviet Union to Japan, so I took the letter home with me to the US, and posted it to Japan when I got home. (At that time I was studying Russian and Japanese and would have made the perfect translator?) I don't know how it all turned out... sadly....
-- Jo in Scotland
Makes you wonder what would happen to mail to Sweden???
Oh, once, while I was in VA, my grandparents (living in Denmark) send me a parcel, which took _forever_ to arrive. When I finally got it, I discovered why: They had left out the address with the state and zip code. So it had been to Yorktown, Texas and some other Yorktown, that I now forget.
At least that was not the fault of USPS and they tried pretty hard to get the parcel to the right place!
Hanne in London
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