Re: CHAT: postcodes

quite interesting ... i didn't know about the uk post codes and the french
license plates. i just put in the address of an english friend of mine into
streetmap.co.uk and it showed me exactly where the street is :-) amazing.

the german system (5 digits; introduced in 1993) is quite straightforward.
whole germany is divided into 10 regions (0-9) which are each divided in
subregions, so that from the first digits of a german postcode you can
conclude the region (compared to france where they've their number assigned
by alphabetical order, it's much easier to see).
many towns have got more than one post code; mine (59494) doesn't, even
though it has 50,000 inhabitants. but postboxes and companies do have
special codes.

before this system, both west and east germany had a 4-digit-system, which
was a bit confusing, because you had to add W- or O- when sending a letter
to the other part of germany. in this system, each town had one and only one
code, but many were divided into districts carrying a number of their own
which had to be added to the post code like this: 8000 munchen 2 (it was
more common to just write 8 munchen 2; my town was 4770 (477) soest).
usually: the more noughts a post code had, the bigger the city was.

german automobile license plates consist of one, two or even three letters
which refer to the city or region (e.g. SO=soest, B=berlin, HH=hamburg,
HSK=hochsauerlandkreis), followed by one or two letters and up to four
digits.

<<>>
HCLE




Roger Mills wrote:

> IIRC-- back in the olden days, before postal codes were thought to be
> necessary, 75 was the Paris prefix on automobile license plates.  Did they
> just adapt that system to the mails? Quite logical, if so.
Quite right.  My girlfriend's mother once found a collection of
small calenders in a house she was renting - some of them quite old
- and in the back of one of them there was a table of French license
plates codes.  I forget how old it was but to give you an idea, it
listed Algeria as part of France. :)  I forget what its code was.

Here, it's quite common to see _just_ the Departmental code when
referring to a place.  I might, for example, sign an e-mail "Eamon
Graham (49)" meaning I'm Eamon Graham and living in Maine-et-Loire.

Departmental codes are two digits with the following exceptions:
Corsica is divided into 2A and 2B and overseas departments are three
digits beginning with 97: Guadeloupe is 971.

License tags are formatted thusly: NNNN XX DD where NNNN = a four
digit number (I've seen more, but outside my window right now I just
see 4 digits) XX = two letters and DD = the departmental code.  I
don't know - maybe someone can confirm or deny this for me, I don't
own a car - but the XX seems to have something to do with the
location as well.  I've noticed that here in Maine-et-Loire a lot of
license tags have two letter codes beginning with the higher letters
of the alphabet; XY 49 is very common at the end of license tags
here in Angers.

Cheers,
Eamon