Some notes about the Czech Postal Service

About two months before I move, I began my bi-yearly ritual of packing up all my stuff to be shipped to my new country of residence. Each country has its own unique postal problem, some more acute than others. The trick is knowing what items will be flagged by customs inspectors and lead to the detainment of your contraband.

In Norway, for example, you won’t have too many problems in terms of contents, but the practice of just leaving your package on your door step or with a perfect stranger that lives in your building is an issue. Luckily, Norwegians are quite trustworthy people and you’ll probably get your stuff somehow. In Korea, it’s virtually impossible to find a full service post office to send your package from, but getting a package delivered- no problem, this is a country of people who love buying things, including online purchases (Koreans are the ultimate consumers) so the infrastructire is firmly in place top handle the demand. It also helps that people work longer hours, so you might even be home when they try to deliver you something, if you aren’t as lucky as I was, and have a door man that would sign for packages for the tenants and bring it up to you himself! In Czech Republic, the problem is the post office itself. It is easily the most confusing place on earth, so many windows that only do very specific tasks and an arsenal of documents and signatures are always required to do anything! I actually have to bring my passport in order to pick up my mail, a receipt and ID card? -you say. “Not enough”, not on the Czech postal army’s watch!

Despite the inherent unpleasantness of going to the Czech post office, something happened the other day that was out of character for them. I got a notice to pick up a large letter from the package window at the main Pardubice post office. When I went to the post office, with my friend Mila, to translate, we selected our queuing number “455” from the many, many options on the automated ticket distributing machine. We nestled into the comfy chairs speculating how horribly complicated picking up this thing would be. When it was finally our turn, it was a package that I assumed would never arrive as it was a birthday gift from Norway, that was addressed completely incoherently; the house number was where the postal code should have been, there was in fact no postal code anywhere, nor return address. About the only think correct information listed was my name and the country- yet, they found me! I was quite surprised, especially since the last package I received (which was addressed correctly) was a month late and was completely broken, dripping and moldy! Then there was the time they charged me $40 USD in tax for a used blanket that I had sent from the US, apparently there is a heftly flat tax on anything called “a blanket”. I was received a similar bill when my mom sent me some coffee. Based on the tenuous relationship I have had thus far with the Czech post office, they have redeemed themselves slightly as a result of their extra effort to get me my birthday care package.