Snail Mail

[Vera]

When somebody mails something in the US and he or she relies on the regular mail service aka 'first class mail'; that person will say 'I'm snail-mailing you the hard copies'. It's usually not that bad, occasionally mail gets to us 10 days later, but in general it's within a week or faster.
When offices in the Netherlands send us something using the Dutch postal service, they usually add their stuff to a stack of outgoing mail, which means it will get a stamp with 'postage paid' with sufficient fare for domestic mail, but not for international mail. Surprisingly we end up getting those letters, usually 6 weeks to 3 months later. We usually joke about it, since it's like somebody noticed this and wondered what to do next? And then decides to delay the delivery process and sit on it for a couple weeks before it gets back in the mail trail. It's the true meaning of snail mail, but we get it after all....
Today, I opened a letter, marked up on the envelope with some corrections.
It turned out to have our street address on it, but it was missing the next 2 lines for City & Zip code and for country.
I am surprised it even got here!!! When I opened it, I checked the date. The letter is dated January 25th, 2010. That's 9 months! Could have given birth to a baby in the meantime and a pigeon would have delivered this letter way quicker :-)

[Koen Eykhout]

Reminds me a bit of that story about Boerhaave, a doctor in the 18th century who was so famous that when someone in China sent him a letter "Boerhaave, Europe", it actually arrived!