German Crossed Sevens

Peter Rukavina

I can’t imagine a better result from mailing out Christmas cards than the solving of a German postal mystery for my old friend James. It all comes down to whether the seven in the “78” in his address should be crossed or not

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Submitted by Oliver on

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Interesting. Fits with my memory of handwritten 1s in Europe (e.g. on cafe receipts) looking totally ambiguous to me, like they could as well be 7s as 1s. A few times I resolved it by noticing an actual 7, which was unambiguous because of the sever (new word for me). That’s when I saw the point of crossing 7s, which seemed down to idiosyncrasy over here.

Submitted by Jarek on

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Isn't this also because the handwritten address is missing a postcode? As far as I know there's only one Warschauer Straße in Berlin, but that's not the case for other street names, and postcodes are standard in German addresses.

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Photo of Peter RukavinaI am . I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.

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