Re: CHAT: postcodes

 --- Christophe wrote:

> The Netherlands use a similar system, but simpler, which goes DDDD LL, ie.
> four numbers followed by two letters. The four numbers mark a "zone" (IIRC it
> begins with somewhere in Amsterdam which is the 1000 zone), but I don't know
> how the zones themselves are organised. As for the two letters, they mark the
> street in the zone.
All you write is correct, except for the fact that a postcode does not mark a
street, but a part of a street. Usually, the even side has a different code
from the uneven (odd?) side of the same street. Longer streets can be divided
into even more postcodes; I think you can safely say, that a postcode covers (a
few blocks of) one side of a street, but never more streets.
Indeed, Amsterdam begins with 1000, where 1000-1009 are mailboxes. 1010-1019 is
the centre of the city, and the further you go, the higher the number will be.
Zaandam, where I live, has numbers from 1500. My postcode, 1501 CE, indicates
that we live in the old part of the town, but not necessarility in the centre.

> So with only the postcode and the door number the address is
> complete. The idea behind the system was to stop using streetnames and town
> names. But people continue to put them on letters, although they are
> completely unnecessary.
For sentimental reasons, I guess. The name of a city/town/village and a street
name leave much more space for both your imagination than four digits and two
letters. And it's of course much easier to memorize.
Besides, people often make mistakes with postcodes, but the letter usually gets
through anyway, sometimes with a small delay. I know people who still never use
them.

> Something that was surprising for me the first time I came to the Netherlands
> was the fact that each house or apartment door has its own number, whereas in
> France apartment buildings have a single door number (so you have to specify
> the name of the person you send a letter to).
It depends very much where you live. The kind of thing you describe occur
mainly in newly built neighbourhoods, but even there it is not uncommon that
the building has one number, and an extension is used to differentiate between
the apartments. There are different ways to do that:
- with a floor number, for example nr. 25/2 or 25-II;
- with a description, for example, nrs. 65hs and 65bv (abbreviations of "huis"
  and "boven", meaning the lower and the upper part of the house respectively;
- sometimes with a letter: 183A - 183J (all apartments within one block).

In Haarlem there are even more variations: 12-rood, 15-zwart, 18-bel. I don't
exactly know why they use colours for that, obviously for some historic reason.

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> In the Netherlands, cars have plates with two groups of two letters and one
> group of two figures, and they have to do only with the date the car was
> first bought (but unlike in France, they do a national count rather than a
> departmental one). Funny enough, when they run out of plates, they rearrange
> the three groups, giving them another order. So you see cars with plates
> going LL-DD-LL, but also cars with LL-LL-DD plates and cars with DD-LL-LL
> plates :))) .
Yes. DD-LL-LL are the newest cars. My car is from 1997 and has PX-FF-98; my car
before was from 1989 and had XP-44-JY. Earlier I had a car from 1975 with the
registration 09-HR-33.
AFAIK all possible combinations have been used now; I'm really curious what
they are going to do when they run out of codes: either six letters or six
digits only, or by adding one letter or digit.

Jan

=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones

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