A long way from the Morse Telegraph

I've just finished sending an email to a friend in Germany. It took me quite a while to write, as most of it is in German. I expect it will look quite funny to a German speaker, but don't forget I hadn't really spoken any German at all for decades, until last week. My German syntax and grammar are mostly in place, but the words are bound to look schoolboyish or starchy.
When I was a teenager I briefly became pen-friends with a German girl. I remember the letters used to take a week to reach their destination, that is it took at least a fortnight to receive a reply. Of course one could always telephone, and we had recently got one, but the calls were prohibitively expensive for us.
Isn't email wonderful! One can communicate instantaneously with another person anywhere in the world. It is truly mind-boggling.