One thing I’ve noticed about this area of Germany is the lack of street signs and visible addresses. I live in an apartment and I’ve been told my complete address is:
Blitzburg 25
92654 Kroutville
Is it correct in assuming that this address is specific to my unit? Or is it only specific to the dozen or so connected units? I’m thinking its possible that the address is enough to get in the ballpark and then maybe the Deutch Post carrier somehow looks at the names on the boxes or something? There aren’t any numbers anywhere.
Is my neighbor “Blitzburg 24”? Or is he also “Blitzburg 25”?
Generally, the idea is to give every building its own unique number, which means that larger apartment complexes with multiple parties living in them also only get one number. The number gets the letter into the right building, and the name on the letter gets it into the right mailbox within that building (which are usually located somewhere near the front door and central staircase). So, if by your neighbour you mean somebody living in a different apartment within the same building, he’ll have the same number; if you mean somebody on a neighbouring property, he’ll have a different one, though usually two higher or lower than yours, since numbers are distributed in such a way that the evens go on one side of the street, and the odds on the other.
20 years ago I lived in Germany for a while. Correctly addressed post was not delivered to me, even though the address included my apartment number, because I had not put my name on the mailbox in the hallway of the apartment building. When I rectified the error, the backlog of post was delivered.
Odd. I used to live in an apartment building in Germany when I was young, and our address was something like
Blitzburg 25-3
92654 Kroutville
where the 3 was the apartment number within building #25 on Blitzburg street. Of course, we never used that address, since we were on a military base and it was easier to have our mail routed through the Canadian Forces Europe headquarters, so like everyone else, the address we gave our to friends was in Belleville Ontario! This was in the early 90s, btw.
That’s been an annoyance to me too (I use to distribute party pamphlets at election time…)
Street signs are usually one at each end of a street, i.e. often not repeated for the main street where a smaller street crosses so whan you are at house number 162 you might need to backtrack to house numbers 1 and 2 if you want to make sure what street you are in.
Towns usually have a requirement for houses to display their house number but at a lot of houses you’ll have to look hard for a smallish, rusty number affixed decades ago (especially with householders who do not expect visits from strangers and who are not yet at the time of life where you are anxious for the emergency services to arrive quickly…)
A house number usually refers to a building e.g. anything from a small house to a tower block. They usually count up by 2 each side of the street; if later buildings are inserted e.g. between numbers 20 and 22 they get numbered 20a, 20b, etc.
Apartment numbers/suite numbers for businesses are almost never used or displayed (even a rental contract will typically not cite a unit# but something like “7th floor, last on the left”). Postal carriers and visitors will go by name on the mail slot/on the doorbell (which is why communally used apartments or houses will often have a longish list of names on the mail box, so mail does not go back as ‘unknown’).