Postcards - past their 'use by' date?

Has modern technology overtaken 'snail mail' to the extent that the latter is no longer useful for short trips? My latest experience suggests the answer is yes...definitely yes.

I sent a dozen or so postcards to friends in Australia from Germany one week into my recent overseas trip with two weeks still to go before my return home. I also sent most of these friends an email or two when the internet service allowed.

Not one of my postcards beat me home. Perversely, all of the postcards I sent to friends at the hospital were amongst the mail I collected from the Hospital's mail room as part of my volunteer's role on my first day back at work and I delivered them by hand to the addressees. I might as well have carried the cards home myself and saved on the stamps!  Just as perversely, the card I sent to the Nursing Home arrived the next day, a few hours after my return to work there.

All of my emails to the same recipients arrived without delay and were welcomed, even the one liners, as evidence that I was alive and well and having fun. Frankly my impression is the emails were welcomed more than the postcards.

Tempis Fugit (even if the postcards do not).