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The first time that I went on vacation to Africa I was mindblown. The concept of city, town or even village broke down for me; one of the places where I was sta

The first time that I went on vacation to Africa I was mindblown. The concept of city, town or even village broke down for me; one of the places where I was staying was just a streak of houses dispersed more or less close to a single road. Addresses were hardly a thing, people just knew where each one lived, so you had to ask for 'xyz house'. I don't want to sound PC but this is the kind of reasons why more diversity and breadth of life experiences is good for businesses.

liotier 9y ago
> one of the places where I was staying was just a streak of houses dispersed more or less close to a single road You were in America actually...
- baud147258 9y ago
  That's not just in America, part of Europe can qualify too. Except that they might have addresses.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    > Except that they might have addresses. This reminds me of how when the German zip codes were unified in the 1990s, they forgot about one district. > Although the Gutsbezirk Reinhardswald is officially uninhabitated, two people inhabit and operate the Tillyschanze restaurant, next to the observation tower of the same name above the city of Hann. Münden, located in Lower Saxony. The border between the states of Hesse and Lower Saxony runs between the restaurant and the observation tower. The territory has no postal code as it was forgotten about when the postal codes were assigned in 1993, as such no mail is delivered to the inhabitants.[2] The official address, as given by the authorities, is Tillyschanze 1, 00000 Reinhardswald.[2] Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutsbezirk_Reinhardswald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutsbezirk_Reinhardswald
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      That's a cool address!
    - Freak_NL 9y ago
      According to the German Wikipedia they finally got a post code (and mail delivery!) in 2015¹: Bierweg 1, 34346, Hann. Münden. Incidentally, that district apparently has a voter turn out of 100%; both Reinhold and Marlies (the two inhabitants) seem to go out and vote when called upon. I wonder if the voting results from that districts are published as-is or grouped with the neighbouring district for anonymity? 1: http://tillyschanze.de/kurioses/ http://tillyschanze.de/kurioses/
  - etu 9y ago
    I think maybe many places in Europe has addresses now. When I grew up, I grew up on a gravel road not very far from a capital city. That road did maybe have a name at that time. I don't know. But our house had a name. So we wrote our addresses like this: My Name Our house name Zip Code Region name Then some years later EU forced us to get an address, so the gravel road became a street (according to the name) with numbers that are totally messed up and make no sense since the houses are so spread out. But I guess it somehow made something better? I've tried to map up the house numbers on OpenStreetMap but I honestly don't know more houses than the one I grew up in and the closest neighbor. This is like 15-20 years ago that this change happened. But if I want to be retro, I can still send snailmail to the house name. The postalservice manage to sort that out.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Except in the US those houses almost certainly have a street address and are associated with a town, however small and dispersed that town may be. (At one point, there was a a fairly significant effort to give consistent addresses to houses that might lack them primarily for emergency services reasons. I grew up in a house on a rural delivery route that did not have a house number at the time.)
jordigh 9y ago
> I don't want to sound PC Sound however you want to sound, and don't listen to those who use "PC" as a derogatory term. I personally prefer to call it "nice" instead of "PC".

liotier 9y ago

> one of the places where I was staying was just a streak of houses dispersed more or less close to a single road You were in America actually...

baud147258 9y ago
That's not just in America, part of Europe can qualify too. Except that they might have addresses.
- majewsky 9y ago
  > Except that they might have addresses. This reminds me of how when the German zip codes were unified in the 1990s, they forgot about one district. > Although the Gutsbezirk Reinhardswald is officially uninhabitated, two people inhabit and operate the Tillyschanze restaurant, next to the observation tower of the same name above the city of Hann. Münden, located in Lower Saxony. The border between the states of Hesse and Lower Saxony runs between the restaurant and the observation tower. The territory has no postal code as it was forgotten about when the postal codes were assigned in 1993, as such no mail is delivered to the inhabitants.[2] The official address, as given by the authorities, is Tillyschanze 1, 00000 Reinhardswald.[2] Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutsbezirk_Reinhardswald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutsbezirk_Reinhardswald
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    That's a cool address!
  - Freak_NL 9y ago
    According to the German Wikipedia they finally got a post code (and mail delivery!) in 2015¹: Bierweg 1, 34346, Hann. Münden. Incidentally, that district apparently has a voter turn out of 100%; both Reinhold and Marlies (the two inhabitants) seem to go out and vote when called upon. I wonder if the voting results from that districts are published as-is or grouped with the neighbouring district for anonymity? 1: http://tillyschanze.de/kurioses/ http://tillyschanze.de/kurioses/
- etu 9y ago
  I think maybe many places in Europe has addresses now. When I grew up, I grew up on a gravel road not very far from a capital city. That road did maybe have a name at that time. I don't know. But our house had a name. So we wrote our addresses like this: My Name Our house name Zip Code Region name Then some years later EU forced us to get an address, so the gravel road became a street (according to the name) with numbers that are totally messed up and make no sense since the houses are so spread out. But I guess it somehow made something better? I've tried to map up the house numbers on OpenStreetMap but I honestly don't know more houses than the one I grew up in and the closest neighbor. This is like 15-20 years ago that this change happened. But if I want to be retro, I can still send snailmail to the house name. The postalservice manage to sort that out.
ghaff 9y ago
Except in the US those houses almost certainly have a street address and are associated with a town, however small and dispersed that town may be. (At one point, there was a a fairly significant effort to give consistent addresses to houses that might lack them primarily for emergency services reasons. I grew up in a house on a rural delivery route that did not have a house number at the time.)

jordigh 9y ago

> I don't want to sound PC Sound however you want to sound, and don't listen to those who use "PC" as a derogatory term. I personally prefer to call it "nice" instead of "PC".