When we just moved to the Netherlands, we had to learn how the houses are numbered in this country. They sort of aren’t. Or at least not all of them. Or, should I say they are numbered, but not in a way we are used to.

Back in Russia, every building that had multiple apartments had both a house number and each apartment had a number as well. I guess that’s the system familiar to people in many countries. A private one-family house will have only a house number in that system. My old address looked this way: Moscow, Borisovsky proezd (as in Borisovsky Drive) #1, building 3, apartment 562 (we had a through numbering in all three 22-story buildings).

In the Netherlands, the system is different. While the detached houses have their own street numbers, everything else is numbered with apartment numbers only (sometimes additional letters are included). Our temporary address in Amsterdam looked like Teilingen 77. And it was a tall building with many apartments that included addresses from Teilingen 3 to Teilingen 157 or something. The next building on the street (which was the second building there) had numbers from Teilingen 159 to Teilingen 187.

I was pretty confused by that system and figured it out only by our third month in the country. Before that, I ordered items to some random addresses like Teilingen 7 or something. Luckily, the building had a reception, and they were able to check the name on the package before delivering it to the apartment.

I wonder how many clueless newly arrived foreigners do the same thing there?

Well, here comes the French approach to street numbering.

As it appears, some houses don’t have apartment numbers here. Or don’t use them; I’m not sure about it.

Yesterday, I had a special reason to worry about how this system works because I ordered a new ring lighting for recording our podcast (my new recording location is pretty dark). So, I was waiting for the delivery person to come to the house and wasn’t sure how all this would work out.

In this house, postboxes and intercome are blocked by the outer door. There are names on the postboxes, and we added our names there. But to get to this point, you need to get through the outer door!

There is a digital code panel on the outer door, but, as I wrote earlier, there are no apartment numbers in the house, so I’m not sure how a person could call intercoms in the apartments from there. They probably cannot do that.

Luckily, Amazon showed that the delivery person was approaching, and I waited, staring out of our window. When a person with a larger Amazon box came close to our house, I rushed down to meet them.

Well, as it appears, you can call an operator from the outside, and they will let you into that inner space, where the intercom and mailboxes are located.

Anyway, now I have my new lighting, and you will see it working in one of the next videos we are recording with Mark Cockram later today.

And now we are sure that if we need to get some important mail or delivery, the person who will bring the stuff will be able to reach our mailbox

The intercom isn’t working properly, though. But that’s a different issue.

Updated after we moved to Versailles:

So, we are finally in our permanent apartment in Versailles. Not surprising, there are no apartment numbers in this building as well. There is an intercom down below when a guest or a delivery person can find us by our family name (that’s when the initial record «Sofya Stepan» will be fixed). Next, near the entrance, you can find the list of all people living in the building. With remarks, on which staircase they reside, to which floor you should go and on which side (left or right) you should look for the needed apartment.