Thursday, April 14, 2011

Stamps from Qatar

Qatari stamps

A friend and colleague spent a good chunk of the past year in Doha, Qatar. Of course, I asked her for her address so we could exchange letters. It was fun to see her get excited about snail mail again, and I confess I knew this was probably one of my only chances to get mail from Qatar! (There are only 37 Postcrossing users in Qatar, for example.)

I had to scan some of the stamps on one of her most stamp-ful letters, because I thought they were so interesting and different. I don't get many stamps with Arabic on them.

Here is a factor I never considered: I had to send my friend mail through her husband's workplace, because Qatar does not do mail delivery to residences, only to businesses. Can you imagine? No wonder there aren't very many Postcrossers! I found myself wondering, what does one do if one is unemployed, or retired? Can one get mail there?