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> German apartments don’t have apartment numbers. If your name is not on your mailbox, postal workers can’t deliver your mail. This can also cause delivery fai

> German apartments don’t have apartment numbers. If your name is not on your mailbox, postal workers can’t deliver your mail. This can also cause delivery failures the other way around - a friend in Germany once sent me a package but didn't bother writing the apartment number on it because she assumed the postman would use my name to find the right box. Instead it got sent right back to Germany. (Austrian bureaucracy is just as unforgiving as German, they just have different rules to follow...)

spiderfarmer 3y ago
Adding small texts about the importance of the input you provide is missing in so many forms. OP handled it perfect here.
TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
Whereas the Irish post office (An Post) seem to pride themselves on solving puzzles to deliver to ambiguous addresses.
- jpsouth 3y ago
  Same for England from what I gather, probably not on the same scale as Ireland though. I wonder if some of the countries referenced in the thread have different laws regarding opening post - in England it’s illegal to open post that isn’t addressed to you, so if the postie did make a mistake it’s not the end of the world as the receiver would just pop it back in the letter box (in an ideal world)
Tenoke 3y ago
> German apartments don’t have apartment numbers They do (at least sometimes?). They are just not listed anywhere and barely used. I have my number in my contract, and e.g. Vatenfall have it to connect the meter number to the flat number.
- xioxox 3y ago
  They don't always. For my flat in a small block, it's "Erdgeschoss rechts" or EGR, in the contract or for the electricity.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    In Denmark, abbreviations like that are the address. Amagergade 5, 1. th. Means building 5, first floor, to the right (til højre).
henvic 3y ago
This reminds me that recently I, here in the Netherlands, had to send a letter and made the mistake of writing it in the wrong format (to/from), but still the address in where it should be 'from' was really small, and 'to' was really big. To make things clear, I decided to just prefix "To: " and "From: " thinking it would be enough. Surely enough, 2 days later I received the mail back at my mailbox. Wasted 2 euros ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I just needed a single stamp, but they stamped on both so I couldn't even try to reuse it. And I also posted on the mailbox for "other zip code" rather than "close by zip codes". I don't know if OCR or a person messed up. Well, definitely a person (me)...
croisillon 3y ago
Even within Austria there are differences: i used to live in Innsbruck with an address written 4-51 (meaning street number 4, door 51) and then moved to Vienna, street number 2, door number 14. But in Vienna 2-14 means the big building with street numbers 2 through 14. My building was not big, you could physically see it is street number 2. Well, i never got that letter.
- ComputerGuru 3y ago
  So how would street 2, door 14 be correctly written in Vienna?
  - croisillon 3y ago
    2/14 is the correct way, but if number 2 has several staircases (typically the case of a 2-14) it would be 2/3/14 (or typically 2-14/3/14) with 3 being the staircase number
flurdy 3y ago
My sister sent a parcel this week with presents for my daughter's birthday (Happy birthday Ruby!), from Norway to the UK. She filled in all the spoiler customs parts but must have gotten stressed and completely forgot to write our street name and house number. Just my name, post code and country. 3 days later our postie knocked on our door and asked if this parcel was for us! We don't live in a big city but still it is a town of 20,000 so not that rural where everyone knows you, so I was impressed that they cared enough to try to figure out the address. Granted the post code narrows the search down. I am certain had it been shipped the other way the post office in Norway would have rejected it immediately for not being 100% by-the-book.
- throwaway_no 3y ago
  > I am certain had it been shipped the other way the post office in Norway would have rejected it immediately for not being 100% by-the-book. The postal office in Norway tries hard to deliver to the correct destination. I've heard of similar stories where they only had a name and a city to go on, and it was delivered at the correct location. During Christmas, they even have a team of dedicated "detectives" who tries their hardest to figure out who the packages should be sent to.
  - flurdy 3y ago
    Maybe, but Norway do make it harder for themselves by having just a 4 number postcode that could include many thousands of addresses. A UK postcode is often down to just one street or similar size. Once, someone I knew in Norway (ok, my sister again...) somehow managed to combine her old and new address when ordering something online. And that parcel back and forth between 2 cities for a long time... :)
    - ralferoo 3y ago
      > A UK postcode is often down to just one street or similar size. It's even better than that. Unless you are incredibly rural or the street is tiny, most streets have at least two postcodes - one for the odd side and one for the even side. In most cases, there's only about 15-30 houses in a postcode, any more on a road and it's split up into smaller chunks.

spiderfarmer 3y ago

Adding small texts about the importance of the input you provide is missing in so many forms. OP handled it perfect here.

TRiG_Ireland 3y ago

Whereas the Irish post office (An Post) seem to pride themselves on solving puzzles to deliver to ambiguous addresses.

jpsouth 3y ago
Same for England from what I gather, probably not on the same scale as Ireland though. I wonder if some of the countries referenced in the thread have different laws regarding opening post - in England it’s illegal to open post that isn’t addressed to you, so if the postie did make a mistake it’s not the end of the world as the receiver would just pop it back in the letter box (in an ideal world)

Tenoke 3y ago

> German apartments don’t have apartment numbers They do (at least sometimes?). They are just not listed anywhere and barely used. I have my number in my contract, and e.g. Vatenfall have it to connect the meter number to the flat number.

xioxox 3y ago
They don't always. For my flat in a small block, it's "Erdgeschoss rechts" or EGR, in the contract or for the electricity.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  In Denmark, abbreviations like that are the address. Amagergade 5, 1. th. Means building 5, first floor, to the right (til højre).

henvic 3y ago

This reminds me that recently I, here in the Netherlands, had to send a letter and made the mistake of writing it in the wrong format (to/from), but still the address in where it should be 'from' was really small, and 'to' was really big. To make things clear, I decided to just prefix "To: " and "From: " thinking it would be enough. Surely enough, 2 days later I received the mail back at my mailbox. Wasted 2 euros ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I just needed a single stamp, but they stamped on both so I couldn't even try to reuse it. And I also posted on the mailbox for "other zip code" rather than "close by zip codes". I don't know if OCR or a person messed up. Well, definitely a person (me)...

croisillon 3y ago

Even within Austria there are differences: i used to live in Innsbruck with an address written 4-51 (meaning street number 4, door 51) and then moved to Vienna, street number 2, door number 14. But in Vienna 2-14 means the big building with street numbers 2 through 14. My building was not big, you could physically see it is street number 2. Well, i never got that letter.

ComputerGuru 3y ago
So how would street 2, door 14 be correctly written in Vienna?
- croisillon 3y ago
  2/14 is the correct way, but if number 2 has several staircases (typically the case of a 2-14) it would be 2/3/14 (or typically 2-14/3/14) with 3 being the staircase number

flurdy 3y ago

My sister sent a parcel this week with presents for my daughter's birthday (Happy birthday Ruby!), from Norway to the UK. She filled in all the spoiler customs parts but must have gotten stressed and completely forgot to write our street name and house number. Just my name, post code and country. 3 days later our postie knocked on our door and asked if this parcel was for us! We don't live in a big city but still it is a town of 20,000 so not that rural where everyone knows you, so I was impressed that they cared enough to try to figure out the address. Granted the post code narrows the search down. I am certain had it been shipped the other way the post office in Norway would have rejected it immediately for not being 100% by-the-book.

throwaway_no 3y ago
> I am certain had it been shipped the other way the post office in Norway would have rejected it immediately for not being 100% by-the-book. The postal office in Norway tries hard to deliver to the correct destination. I've heard of similar stories where they only had a name and a city to go on, and it was delivered at the correct location. During Christmas, they even have a team of dedicated "detectives" who tries their hardest to figure out who the packages should be sent to.
- flurdy 3y ago
  Maybe, but Norway do make it harder for themselves by having just a 4 number postcode that could include many thousands of addresses. A UK postcode is often down to just one street or similar size. Once, someone I knew in Norway (ok, my sister again...) somehow managed to combine her old and new address when ordering something online. And that parcel back and forth between 2 cities for a long time... :)
  - ralferoo 3y ago
    > A UK postcode is often down to just one street or similar size. It's even better than that. Unless you are incredibly rural or the street is tiny, most streets have at least two postcodes - one for the odd side and one for the even side. In most cases, there's only about 15-30 houses in a postcode, any more on a road and it's split up into smaller chunks.