From Gazeta Wyborcza via China View: Seriously calculated: mail slower than snails

A serious calculation has led to a couclusion that a postal delivery is even slower than snails in Poland, according to local Daily Gazeta Wyborcza Thursday.

An IT worker, after receiving a letter on Jan. 3 that was sent on Dec. 20 as priority mail, calculated that a snail would have made it even faster to his home than the letter.

The daily said Michal Szybalski calculated that it took 294 hours for the letter to arrive at his home.

He also said the distance between his home and the sender was 11.1 kilometers.

Given the distance and the time, the speed of the letter was 0.03775 kilometers per hour.

Szybalski calculated that a garden snail travels at around 0.048 kilometers per hour.

When I send things to Poland, typically gifts and supplies to teachers, I try to use Express Mail. An Express Mail package mailed before Christmas took about the same amount of time. Funny thing, the U.S. Postal Service’s website was advising me that the package was over the Atlantic for the majority of that time. Slooooow plane to Poland.