This city centre has no street names

In the Quadratestadt of Mannheim, Germany, the streets aren't named: instead, the blocks are. It's an exception to a rule that most people don't even think about - especially not mapping companies.
(Thanks to João Correia for sending me this idea back in 2015!)
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[@TomScottGo]

It's nice to be back to occasional videos that are just me, in a place, saying a thing. They may not be regular any more, but they're still fun to make.

[@morganbonner602]

Tom Scott , Keep up the good work!! 💙

[@George_Azeria]

Tom Scott they’re fun to watch as well!

[@JamesSmith-rb5lv]

2 weeks ago?👏👏👏 Well done.

[@elnoruego6854]

Tom Scott Hey Tom!

[@JohnR31415]

Easy to listen to when you can’t watch anything due to illness - thanks

[@imveryangryitsnotbutter]

Yikes, Tom, get away from that huge block of C4.

[@blindleader42]

Imagine the blast that would make. Calling The Mythbusters.

[@marcusalm7350]

It's totally safe. See for yourself!

[@FindecanorNotGmail]

Mythbusters even set a block of C4 on fire - and it did not explode.

[@blindleader42]

Findecanor, Apparently, you didn't catch on to what these replies are about. Marcus is expanding the joke by quoting or paraphrasing a humorous line from Mythbusters. I have no idea what setting a block of C4 on fire has to do with anything, because nobody mentioned it. On the other hand, the Mythbusters have, on numerous occasions, had detonators inserted into blocks of C4 - and... well, I can't remember what happened. Anyone?

[@imveryangryitsnotbutter]

+ Marcus Alm I would rather not C4 myself, thank you.

[@gergelybodi3728]

There's also an O2 shop in the O2 block.

[@bittyshottoms1007]

Is there a Gay Sechs store on the G6 block?

[@joshuan.]

This comment is underrated

[@wert2789]

Not true

[@bittyshottoms1007]

@@wert2789 Don't be green with envy, Pere Wert

[@wert2789]

@@bittyshottoms1007 the o 2 shop is 3 blocks away

[@Lelilslazuli]

Always happy to see my hometown attract international attention! Although you definitely missed the chance to stand in front of block U2 and point out that in this city, the streets have no name...

[@Martian10]

Monnem👌

[@ekaterinas8796]

nice pun!

[@nomar5spaulding]

Nice

[@unairamos74]

Brilliant comment!! 😁

[@buggs9950]

U2, the most overrated block.

[@gondras123]

Exception to the Rule. Create a Series! That would be cool!

[@nitehawk86]

One of the episodes would have to be about something that isn't an exception to the rule, of course.

[@nex]

That's how we amateurs would do it, but Tom would just make each episode exceptionally good ;)

[@MartiniComedian]

Whooooaaaaahhh... We're going to deep here... What's next? INCEPTION TO THE RULE

[@electron8262]

Oh look - that rhymes! You're a poet and you didn't even know it! 😉

[@PanglossDr]

There is an exception to every rule. That is itself a rule. Therefore there must be an exception to it. That is a rule which does not have an exception. Therefore, there is not an exception to every rule.

[@stuntdogs]

E6. You sunk my battleship.

[@rickyrico80]

Unfortunately I'm old enough to get the joke. Such a shame you didn't use u-boot.

[@abyssstrider2547]

Is that an old computer game where you had to sink invisible ships while trying to avoid getting your ships sunk

[@abyssstrider2547]

@British Bot When I was a kid I played it on my PC

[@Sophiebryson510]

Jango Fett b4. You sunk my carrier

[@Kyrelel]

sank*

[@killercaos123]

In Costa Rica, the most advanced and stable Central American country, the people don't really have addresses. It's like: "Red house around the corner from the zapateria on the left, Buenavista, Costa Rica." Very unique. Very challenging.

[@untruelie2640]

That's how adresses worked in all european towns and cities until the industrial revolution (or even until the mid to late 19th century). Interesting to see this kind of anachronism still existing today. :)

[@soaringvulture]

Yes. I rented a car in San José and tried to use my GPS (for which I had purchased a Central American map set) and it just said "road". As in, "turn left on the road". None of the streets had names or, reasonably enough, signs. It wasn't easy.

[@pawion]

In my region houses were marked with emblems. You would have given your address by "the sword next to the violet on the vegetable market square" for example

[@EriniusT]

Cool! I thought Nicaragua was the only Central American country like that

[@jankeck8749]

I’m a bike messenger in this city. Let me tell you, this is a very handy nomenclature. Inside the ring road where this nomenclature is applied, I never have to look on a map. You just have to understand how the system works. An additional benefit: In a normal german street, the even house numbers are on one side whereas the odd numbers are on the other side. When over decades buildings with variable footprints come and go, or the avg building width differs from one side to the other, there is an offset (eg numbers 20 and 21 have a distance of several buildings DOWN the street) In one of Mannheims blocks, the numbers are neatly one beside the other, making it easier to quickly determine wich building is wich. Very handy are the blue signs that you can see in the video. They show wich numbers are on wich side of the block. Even for most house numbers they use an official blue sign with the number and an arrow, pointing in the direction of increasing numbers. One problem is that nowadays it isnt mandatory to have the signs on every corner. Newer buildings often dont have the block number and use alternative signs for their building number, wich are often hard to find.

[@FindecanorNotGmail]

I once got lost in Berlin because the door numbers were _not_ odd/even on different sides of the street.

[@izybit]

Findecanor Yeah, hate that.

[@laurencefraser]

Heh, you'd probably hate central Christchurch, New Zealand (at least pre earthquake, this may have changed in the reconstruction), the fire department certainly did/does. For some inexplicable reason, the vast majority of buildings, shops and offices all, seem to have owners allergic to the very idea of displaying their street number At All. Not just making it hard to spot, its not even there. Which, given that their location would be listed in the phone books (and sometimes radio and television ads if the weren't on the corner of an intersection) Using said street number, and some of those streets are very long, was a bit absurd. Worse, we do that "odds and evens on opposite sides of the street, which almost certainly don't line up anymore' thing too, not to mention that sometimes two buildings will be on what Used to be a single lot, and they will be 52a and 52b, not 52 and 54, as an example, and you can't even be sure that just counting from one of the few which Are numbered will work. (Though that's not super common in the commercial districts, being more a residential subdivision thing.)

[@izybit]

Laurence Fraser Odd and even numbers on opposite sides is the best system, even if they don't line up because just by seeing one number you know exactly which way is your destination.

[@jankeck8749]

Findecan Berlin is an exception. Different streets follow different schemes. Thats only one aspect of how Berlin had to undergo many changes in its history. But already back in 1892 Mark Twain described Berlins street naming as chaotic...

[@Jonathanizer]

When i was studying in Mannheim, across from the university there was a diner of sorts in the block of L3, called "El Dry", which is about how you pronounce "L3" in German. So it's not just "Zephyr".

[@matthewlynch9331]

Was it a nice place to study? IM going next year but im on the fence

[@aModernDandy]

I saw this title and thought: “that’s not so weird, Mannheim doesn’t have street names in the Quadrate“- and then it turns out that’s what the video is about 😄 i live just one town over and I work in the palace that’s at the centre of this grid system. Weird to see something so familiar on KZbin.

[@buddyclem7328]

Nice to have West Virginia referenced as a place without rural street names. That is familiar. He could do a whole video on fractional county routes unique to West Virginia. Take Me Home, Country Roads... I guess.

[@JJ-mq2lv]

Hab mir einfach genau dasselbe gedacht hahaha

[@JJ-mq2lv]

Hab mir einfach genau dasselbe gedacht hahaha

[@domusic8587]

Especially if you are not expecting it 😄

[@nolde10]

So you are from Ludwigshafen :-D

[@theminer3746]

“Presumably, that’ll be fix within a few hour after this video uploaded” If you don’t realize this before, this show you how much influence you have on the internet, Tom.

[@Falcrist]

He's intelligent and reasonably charismatic, which puts him above most online creators, and even many television writers.

[@theminer3746]

Falcrist To be honest, I’ll watch him narrating paint dry all day long. I know he can make it interesting.

[@TheDundeeBiscuitLuvU]

It's also a reflection of who his audience is, which is at least to a decenet proportion made of people with the skills and knowledge to do something like that, and to care enough to do it

[@Falcrist]

MaryJane That's true. I find it interesting that youtube comments are universally disparaged, when many channels actually have perfectly reasonable comment sections. It's all about the kind of content being presented.

[@OrigamiMarie]

Falcrist It helps when the channel owner isn't afraid the use the ban hammer :-)

[@MLeoDaalder]

I got bitten by those Mannheim streets once. A client had asked to search a database (and enriching the results with other systems before presenten). One of the most expensive parts was the address lookup (don't know why, we didn't program that part, only called it). So we did the smart thing and required at least 4 characters in the address field before starting searching. Within 10 minutes of delivery the client called, 'We can't find our own address here!' /facepalm

[@PrograError]

I guess that would be the real test for future map apps. whether it accepts special exceptions like Mannheim streets

[@Lugmillord]

I can't upvote you... D: you are at 42 right now.

[@robertlozyniak3661]

Why require at least 4 characters? What is special about the number 4 ?

[@MLeoDaalder]

Nothing special about 4. I remember someone devised that number by randomly looking up streets in Germany and couldn't find anything smaller. The idea is just to prevent returning everything when you search for a or a space (which could be hundreds of megabytes).

[@christopherellis2663]

MLeoDaalder most post code systems use six

[@TheJoebus666]

🎵 Where the streets have no name🎵

[@abegohr2576]

WAIT!: original U2 or the Pet Shop Boys version?

[@TheJoebus666]

Eymeric D'Usall - The original mate, I didn't know there was a Pet Shop Boys version to be honest.

[@AnimeSunglasses]

I want to runnnnnn... To a place on this map... I want to teeaaar down this code that can't find my flat...

[@robertthomas5906]

Cause there ain't no one for to give you no name.. la da daaa dee ..

[@Qermaq]

Bono STILL can't find what he's looking for.

[@emojo1990]

i think this is quite useful for navigating a city, especially, say, a tourist destination. if you need to get to a train station and you know its code, say A and youre in B, you can easily assume its close by! also, im disappointed you didnt start at A and walk to B an make the awful joke.

[@callums5043]

Thats why London's post codes are so useful, have the compass works as most tourists know if they are planning to be in north south ect.

[@OriginalPiMan]

The American street naming system used in many towns is just as effective, when applied in full. Many of the streets in a town or city simply have a number and a cardinal direction. So East 15th Avenue would be 15 blocks east of whatever the middle road is. Unfortunately, the system is unevenly applied. Some towns only number the streets in one direction and will name perpendicular roads with some other system. Other towns might be oriented diagonally, and so North 7th Street can cross 7th Avenue North. If the system was the same everywhere, then navigating (by hand) would be just as easy as in this German city's block system.

[@emojo1990]

then in wales, you have streets like heol ty bont, next to streets named bont y heol

[@jackquillen9120]

AcTULlY ITS YoU'rE

[@ThePCguy17]

It's one of those few sleepy voices that doesn't set me to sleep, because he's always saying something interesting enough that I can't fall asleep.

[@dieters.120]

Fun fact: I used to live in I6 (i6) but on the street signs its written as J6 because back in the days a J was written like a I and vise versa.....try to get a pizza delivered there correctly....oh and also the real J is missing, so ppl wont confuse it with I.... :)

[@lcarusfp]

Oh yea the good old Jodine

[@bennylofgren3208]

lcarusfp Iolene, Iolene, Iolene, Ioleeeeene

[@seanli7493]

I'm getting confused just reading this, can't imagine how the delivery guy must feel... "I can't find I6" "It looks like J6" "I can see a J6, but none of the other buildings look like it" "Yes! That's it, that's I6!" "I just told you that there's no I6" "You're looking at I6 right now!" "No, I am looking at J6"

[@dieters.120]

y kind of :), an other fun ting was filling out online forms...."streetname has to be at least 4 characters"

[@robertlozyniak3661]

So why not tell the pizza guy to go to J6 ?

[@Mooooov0815]

When I was new in Mannheim, this system really confused me, especially when I had to drive my car through this mess of one way roads. But after getting used to it, it's actually really helpful. When someone tells you an address, you immediately have an idea how far away it is and how you can get there

[@nooddood1873]

Tom, German humor is no laughing matter.

[@whuzzzup]

*lasing matter

[@XmarkedSpot]

How many Germans do you need to change a light bulb? One. Because we're efficient and have no sense of humor.

[@althafrafianto]

Planespotting Nürnberg that is so true

[@vsiegel]

"German humor is no laughing matter." is actually quite funny! It is a good example of German humor!

[@Ultrajuiced]

humor will just make us madder

[@dietmartraumer346]

Additional fact: the block counting is oriented to the castle. It gets very logic when you put yourself in front of the castle and look to the city center: The main street from the castle to the river Neckar divides the blocks A-K on the left side from the blocks L-U on the right side of the street. The row A and L are the closest to the castle. In each row the block 1 is at the main street and the block number increases from there to the left and right. The house with the number one on each block is on the corner of the block which is the closest to the castle. The numbering of houses on a block increases clockwise on the blocks on the right side (L-U blocks). The numbering of houses on a block increases counterclockwise on the blocks on the left side of the main street (A-K blocks) So it's wonderful symmetrical!

[@drsnova7313]

There is zero benefit for navigation to having this nonsensical axis defined by the castle that is so "wonderfully symmetrical". If those city planners had any sense, A1 would be in a corner. And not next to L1.

[@keiyakins]

@@drsnova7313 There's still loguc to it. The castle is 0,0, and it goes up or down from there - two blocks west and one north. It's notated with letters to make it easier to catch errors, is all.

[@trustytrest]

@@drsnova7313 There is logic to it. You just need to not be stupid.

[@rrni2343]

There is a street in Iceland ( Smiðjuvegur ) that has a colour coding system layered on top of the name street name, it's because some of the buildings are accessible on different floors depending on from what side you come from. Often making it really hard for people and tech to find what they are looking for.

[@andymcl92]

Árni Where about in Iceland?

[@_Piers_]

Smidjuvegur is the name name of the street. Well it's not, but I don't think it's possible to type an "eth" in my UK (android) keyboard....and Google knows where you mean if you type Smidjuvegur :)

[@jubmelahtes]

Why two Grágata?

[@rrni2343]

Also, they are two, because why not... if you are making a ridiculously confusing system, why not go all out silly.

[@Petra44YT]

That must be a nightmare for (new) mail people.

[@MichaelEdmond]

If you shout random combinations eventually does someone (in German) shout 'you've sunk my battleship!'?

[@OrigamiMarie]

Michael Edmond Ooh a game of battleship where you have to bicycle in a loop around your guess of battleship location? Idea needs a little refining.

[@RoiEXLab]

'Treffer Versenkt' ^^ Had to think about that as well :D

[@jayturner5242]

Tom Scott, make this happen.

[@DonDuracell]

I was born and raised in Mannheim and a friend from school later wrote a book where a murderer plays chess with a police officer on the city map of Mannheim to taunt him where the next murder will happen.

[@Tom5TomEntertainment]

U2's favorite city.

[@gandalfthegrey2171]

Actually the song was written about Addis Abbaba, the capital city of Ethiopia. That's something you might not have known ;)

[@gandalfthegrey2171]

Sure. He used a real-life example as a metaphor to examine meaning in life and the concept of unity amongst other ideas. Look it up. He was inspired after a trip to Ethiopia with his wife.

[@SnoopyDoofie]

Used to be Chris Martin's but now he just sweeps the streets he used to own.

[@PiousMoltar]

Also "U2" would itself be a valid block address here.

[@batheandrelaxinmyshit6344]

Gandalf The Grey Bono is a well known homosexual

[@ThurstonCyclist]

I've been to numerous villages in Austria that have no street names. Each building has a number, but the number is assigned based on the order in which it was built. So, 12 and 13 might be on opposite sides of the village, but 4 might be next door to 72. It's not fun trying to find an address.

[@Sarah-qp8mc]

Acutally there are also quite a lot of villages in Germany using this system and that also breaks a lot of navigation systems, because they can't deal with it.

[@SimonS44]

Thurston Cyclist I guess the "street name" is just the name of the village then, but not no name at all

[@Sarah-qp8mc]

Usually it is, but the name of all streets is the village name and the houses are a couple of kilometers appart. Most of the time there also wouldn't be any road signs like seen in Mannheim because the locals don't need them and it is also hard to add them, because you would have to name every house on each crossing. So i don't think that having the village name as street name is way better than having an empty one but at least a system in which the numbers are assigned.

[@MarimbaMaurice]

That sounds awesome......

[@richardemms3050]

A friend of mine lives in a small French village. From what I can tell they don't even have addresses, you just put their name followed by the village and the rest of the address and the postman just knows where everyone lives.

[@deldarel]

I don't get why google and apple can't just use the same system they use for Japan. Technically in both cases it's blocks that are named. Mannheim has a different naming convention, but it should technically work the same for computers.

[@StefanLopuszanski]

What do they use for Japan? Since when I was there it was just like a series of numbers of street names and was a huge pain

[@RyanAmparo-tl]

Almost all cities are divided into place names, that are then divided into choume, and all choume are divided into 1 to three levels. The plots are not perfectly square. Choume themselves are not perfectly square, but you end up with a system where each lot is assigned a coordinate within a subdivision, which itself is assigned a coordinate within a larger subdivision. The number of subdivision depends per city. Bigger cities have ku on top of the choume. Ku are named. But choume and all subdivisions under it are numbered. There are exceptions like Hokkaido or Chiba (Chiba uses Japanese letters for subdivisions under choume). But this rule applies 90% of the time. If your piece of land gets divided then another sublevel is added to the address (instead of renumbering everything else). This is why the number of levels vary. Only famous streets ever get named, and even then they are almost never used as part of official mailing addresses. The only exception here is Kyoto. Kyoto has named streets, and street names are used in official mailing addresses on top of that numbered choume system.

[@ShapeShifter499]

What I was thinking

[@rachelzimet8310]

I think it's difficult because it's just a specific area within a country, not a whole country. I might be wrong though.

[@Hwyadylaw]

@Stefan Lopuszanski Also when you go to a different city and they have a slightly different system, or even two systems

[@teemusid]

In Carmel-by-the-Sea, in California (not to be confused with Carmel Valley, Carmen, or Carmel Highlands) they have street names, but no numbers for the specific address. I had delivery instructions that said 3 NW and an intersection. You needed to figure out which corner was the NW, then go to the third property down. It actually worked.

[@Maxime_K-G]

1:34 After 5 years and finally visiting the city for myself just a week ago I've added the block numbers to Open Street Map. For some reason, they were there in the editor but just not on the actual map itself. It was a pain having to navigate around using building shapes and store types because the actual block numbers themselves weren't visible. I'm surprised it hasn't been done earlier though.

[@stensoft]

This was fixed in OSM over a year ago (although it should use place=city_block instead of place=neighbourhood) but the default OSM renderer does not render city block

[@davidMz42]

So the default renderer isn't fixed yet... How can I help?

[@bdf2718]

+David tzs The default renderer isn't broken, it's that the cartographic style it uses chooses not to render place=city_block. Other styles, used by other organizations, may render it. It's hard to fit everything in at maximum zoom, so cartographic styles choose what to display. You could run your own server offering a different style and persuade OSM to add that layer to those on offer (like the humanitarian, cycle map and transport map are). Or you could run a fleet of servers offering even more zoom so more details can be rendered. Either of those might cost you a lot more money than you're willing to spend.

[@MarimbaMaurice]

Nice to see you mentioning the great Openstreetmap :)

[@purplegill10]

It made the inner indie cartographer in me happy to hear that.

[@KuraIthys]

Openstreetmap does get around... XD The app I use to find my way around without needing an internet connection has maps derived from OSM data. More interestingly (to me, anyway), OSM data is the basis for the road layouts in the X-plane flight simulator's scenery. I guess that's the upside of making these maps freely available, compared to the expensive proprietary datasets others provide...

[@buddyclem7328]

I like the concept of OSM, but in my area, many of the street names and town names are wrong. I would correct these mistakes if I knew how. I do the same for Google Maps already.

[@stephencresswell4760]

Such a good way of doing videos. Is it interesting? Yes. Make the video. Should it be long? No. Make it short and to the point. Fancy music and graphics? Are they needed? So no.

[@debug_duck]

I live near Mannheim. Over here we call its city center "Quadrate" ("Squares") and Mannheim designed their logo around this fact aswell (Mannheim²)

[@bartbatenburg]

poor people living there, they probably have to tell this entire story everytime they talk to Amazon to ask them where their shipment went

[@TrimutiusToo]

bart batenburg why would amazon care about online maps? You just give them your post address in plain text and then German post services take care of it for them... That is the reason most of international service just have address entered as a text with no divisions into house number and street name and such...

[@Minecraftrok999]

bart batenburg actually it works without any problems.

[@sharank]

Actually it is incredibly easy to navigate around this part of town with just a little bit of effort. You can tell where or how far someone lives by just knowing their address because the street names are arranged sequentially. Only mapping services like apple maps might find it hard to figure it out but we never had any problems using google maps.

[@_Piers_]

Nillie Yes, having a non standard address can be annoying - my address is the name of my house and the village it is in. I often have to add a street name just to make online sites happy - IDontLiveOnA Street :)

[@_Piers_]

Timur Sultanov Do Amazon not deliver their own parcels at all in Germany? In the UK, most Amazon parcel are delivered by someone working for Amazon now...I guess our postal service was too slow and/or to expensive!

[@BeastOfTraal]

"I wanna reach out And touch the flame Where the streets have no name" - Where the Streets have No Name ~ U2

[@JanSanono]

Damn these guys live on motorways like the M1 and A1? Must be tough to sleep at night.

[@Sofus.]

I don't know i live next to a church, and only hear the bell tower when it rings outside the normal schedule.

[@JanSanono]

Sofus not exactly the same. I live the same distance from a motorway as from a church. The motorway I can't hear, partly because of sound barriers, but can hear the church if I'm focusing on it

[@Sofus.]

To be precise, from where I'm writing right now is the bell tower 7 meters away.

[@JanSanono]

Sofus then you've just gotten used to it

[@Rackergen]

Whenever I watch you videos I'm split between admiration and envy. You travel a lot to get to the sites you talk about, just to deliver an authentic point of view. This takes extra effort that I guess few people really appreciate. But it is that special effort that really makes me admire you. And it's the travelling that makes me envy. I guess living in London has its perks after all.

[@surroundgatari]

Stockholm resident here, we have both block and street names! Usually our block names are nouns like "the cigar" or "the peach" and things like that

[@bedeckt]

the joint

[@unvergebeneid]

toffeebomb, are all your block names so suggestive though? ;)

[@jennifercroome1549]

That would explain why I got so lost every single time I went out the door when I was in Stockholm...

[@maighstir3003]

I'm not in Stockholm, but it's the same here, my block is called "the Apple" (or rather "Äpplet", since I'm in Sweden) while the street is called Apelgatan ("apel" being an older word for "apple").

[@bennylofgren3208]

True, but the block names are rarely ever used. We don't use them to send mail or find our way around. The whole system is more of a curiosity nowadays. The block names are printed on most street signs, and they are actually useful if you wonder why a certain street is named what it is, since that often provides a clue.

[@moonpie3094]

I live in Germany and I live near Mannheim. I knew by the title that the video is gonna be about Mannheim, because I was there yesterday and was really confused by these numbers and letters.

[@canoncrazy]

Hi Tom.. I come upon your videos by chance and been subscribed for a while. Just wanna say that i really enjoyed your videos, the quirky knowledge in it and the relax feel of you presenting it. I'm sure making this happen takes a lot of work but you make it look so easy. Keep it up and keep em coming..

[@tahaak]

Monnem!!! :D Saw the title and I instantly had to think about Mannheim. I‘m currently studying there.

[@Cabalex]

I just imagine google maps driving directions through the city: Turn left onto A5 Continue onto A4 Continue onto A3 Continue onto A2 Continue onto A1

[@hvalle98]

Cabalex happened to me before I moved in here a couple of years ago. Google maps goes haywire.

[@ProdigalPorcupine]

Seems a good idea on paper... geddit? A3, A4 etc? Ah, I’ll get my coat.

[@Alexander-vg5qf]

Cabalex Battleship sunk...

[@Ultrajuiced]

probably the only A1 with a speed limit of 30 or 50 km/h

[@HeidiBird]

Wow, I didn't know this! Thanks! It was just as big a revelation when I moved to the UK and realised the post code is the most important part of any address (whereas in the rest of Europe, a post code will refer to a municipality, a town or maybe a district, but not a specific house... as far as I know)

[@markschwarz2137]

I live in Japan, and as an amateur musician, our band plays (with an irony only noticed after we'd been practicing it for several weeks) the U2 song Where the Streets Have No Names.

[@ervega]

In downtown Caracas (Venezuela) blocks corners are identified, not the street, so to give an address you say: go from Marrón to Pelota (from the corner named Marrón to the corner named Pelota)

[@gunwoolee6960]

Wow! You were in Mannheim! Wish I saw you in person

[@JBLewis]

Nicely delivered! It felt perfectly understated.

[@chriswalton9369]

An excellent video as usual. I do hope the couple in the background watch your videos too - it would make a good wedding story!

[@HeadsFullOfEyeballs]

I could tell you were somewhere in Germany just from seeing the buildings in the little thumbnail :D

[@666Tomato666]

tbh, western Poland or Czech Republic would work too

[@HeadsFullOfEyeballs]

666Tomato666: Maaaaybe...but I'd expect the postwar buildings to look more Soviet in that case. Those two newer buildings on the block behind him are very 50s-60s West Germany.

[@Minecraftrok999]

Heads Full Of Eyeballs I could tell he was in Mannheim just from seeing the buildings in the thumbnail :p

[@tjpld]

Same here. I was just about to write this into the comments. I have been to Mannheim, but didn't recognize it just from the thumbnail. However, just looking at 3 buildings, the street lights and the cars that park along the road instantly made me think that this is a street scene somewhere in Germany. I wonder if there is a neutral network that is trained to classify the same.

[@bennylofgren3208]

Judging by the buildings, the square and the streets it could be any small town in Sweden as well. No distinctive road signs are visible, so it's hard to guess the country from anything other than the style of the houses.

[@EllieDoesLife]

Not being creepy but I could listen to your voice all day 😂

[@jan_harald]

creapy? nah, just crêpe-y

[@pintpullinggeek]

And yet I know if I were to make this comment on a female-led education channel then I would be called sexist, misogynistic and many other far from flattering terms (and I would deserve those comments). So while it may not be creepy to want to simply listen to Tom's voice it is creepy to let the rest of us know it.

[@jurian0101]

Tom's voice resembles the guy from NativLang channel so much I suspect they're secretly the same person.

[@Sondelll]

I concur, but I'm not in denial about being creepy ;)

[@LivingintheVan]

Don't wanna sound creepy, but wow, you are gorgeous.

[@hectorrobla]

Bono running, hiding, tearing down the walls, reaching out and touching the flames in Mannheim

[@3rdJan]

Hope you enjoyed your time in Germany! And hey I didn't even know that Mannheim had such a system. Looking forward to your next video!

[@gibbytravis]

"Where the streets have no name... Where the streets have no name..."

[@Twannnng]

Who knew he was singing about Mannhein all this time! ;-)

[@HomeofLawboy]

And I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

[@TheofanisIII]

There are actually 3 streets in Mannheim's inner city that have names.

[@tibethatguy]

@@TheofanisIII You must be fun at parties.

[@bob_._.]

So instead of naming the streets, they name the spaces between the streets. Seems like a viable option to me.

[@ekaterinas8796]

no no, that'S not how it works!

[@kopian12]

Endlich mal eine Erklärung! Ich hab mich immer gefragt, wie das wohl in Mannheim funktioniert. Hatte nur davon gehört! Thanks a lot Tom!

[@DT-kt7eg]

Hi Tom, your videos are awesome. Thanks!

[@AtomicShrimp]

OK, so if Google or whoever needs to coerce this into a system that expects roads to be named rather than blocks, it could still be done. The street between C2 and D2 could be considered CD2 - the street between C2 and C3 could be mapped as C23

[@macronencer]

This comment should be upvoted. Exactly what I thought too when I watched this!

[@shellsterdude]

Wouldn't your last example conflict with C23 if that block existed?

[@macronencer]

If there were more than 9 digits (or 10 if 0 is used) then I suppose we'd need leading zeroes, so something like C0203... There are other possible schemes, taking advantage of the 26 letters of the alphabet. As long as one of your dimensions has at most 9 or 10 blocks, you're fine. If you had, for example, 13x13, then you could just use letters. So the top left block might be AN, and the bottom right MZ. The main difficulty with any choice like this would arise if and when the urban area begins to expand. However, if it's already surrounded by suburbs without a block basis, that's a moot point. Oh, and one more thing: in a very tall city (e.g. sci fi future city), we might start thinking about the third dimension too :) Fun discussion!

[@sebidotorg]

Nobody in Mannheim could use that to find an address like “C4, 9”. All units on the edges of a block would suddenly get two street names, and neither one would be the correct address. The address is “C4, 9”, not “CD4, 9” or “C45, 9”. This is an awful workaround that would make thinks much worse. They should just learn to number the blocks, and until they get that working, you just don’t use Google Maps to find a block in the Quadrate. You do not need it, anyway. Even unit numbers are simple, as they always go the same way around in each half of the city (starting with 1 on the edge closest to the castle, then going counterclockwise if you are to the left of the center road, viewed from the castle, and clockwise if you are to the right of that road).

[@Anonymous-df8it]

@@shellsterdude What about C2C3?

[@ohay12]

So is this the place U2 were talking about?

[@SimonS44]

bhayward2000 U2 actually played in the Berlin metro line U2 a few months back

[@jimbobeire]

"Where the streets have no name" or "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" ? ;)

[@nibblrrr7124]

I didn't get the song reference and looked for the U2 square... (it actually exists!) ^^

[@gandalfthegrey2171]

Sorry to be a party pooper but the place US was talking about was Addis Abbaba, the capital city of Ethiopia. (And that's something you might not have known!)

[@buddyclem7328]

Don't you mean U2?

[@TheGodlikeBlock]

It's fun how i can learn about my own country from your videos, keep it up Tom!

[@spytromics]

I never knew that. Thanks for another great video!

[@SeanBZA]

I have work colleagues whose street address, where they got post delivered to, was simply their name, unnumbered house, unnamed street and the particular section of the township they live in. It worked, as generally everybody there knew who lived there, or at least knew somebody who did.

[@bdf2718]

Old joke about the Welsh and the belief that they distinguish people with the same surname by adding their job. Can you help me? I'm looking for Mr Jones. Everyone around here is called Jones. There's Jones the Butcher and Jones the Carpenter, to name just two. I'm Jones the Shepherd. Hmmmm. Red sky at night is better than a bird in the hand. Oh, you want Jones the Spy.

[@peglor]

As I understand it in Germany you have to register as a resident at the town hall of the town you're living in. If it's a small town or village the post office and town hall may be the same place or even run by the same people, so adding an address mightn't be necessary in this case since they have the address to go with your name already.

[@mysteryman7877]

There’s a street in Phoenix where I think the civil engineers gave up. Camino sin Nombre (Spanish for “Street without a Name”) is in central Phoenix. It’s weird

[@duncanadelaide4054]

It's Phoenix. The sheer existence of that atrocity of failed suburban planning propped up by sheer arrogance and stolen water is enough to make any civil engineer give up, scream, cry, and question the whole of their existence while wandering the streets, eventually growing so aghast at that city's construction that they renounce their profession and move to the mountains of Peru to raise goats and alpacas, and choose to retain the only connections to their previous life via mail delivered by donkey to "Casa De Barro Que Esta El Final Del Camino Que A Veces Tiene Cabras, Oxapampa".

[@TheConnor12500]

Classic Tom Scott video, top notch stuff

[@haukauntrie]

I always love to see you visiting Germany. :) You can even make things like city centres in the middle of my homeland interesting to me.

[@InfinityR319]

Being used to street names, this truly blows my mind on how street name works. If the city grows larger it may start to have the problem of running out numbera

[@voakie2097]

It's only the city center that's using this system

[@InfinityR319]

Still, being used to the “conventional” street name, I wonder how do Mannheim residences write their address; as I always got confused at Japanese addresses every time I visits Japan

[@GamesFromSpace]

You can't really run out of numbers.... They just add another digit.

[@PrograError]

or letters ie. AB21

[@Minecraftrok999]

C.T.R. Lee it's easy to write our Adresses, maybe even easier than yours ^^ For example : D4 11

[@bagandtag4391]

I've never seen so many Tom Scotts in one comment section.

[@EightThreeEight]

It's a bot. I'm gonna have fun flagging them all for spam.

[@blacklightstarcraft]

we are in this together brother or sister to the report little dot's

[@kaybikerow]

I just flagged them all as well, kind of a fun game.

[@daanwilmer]

I reported the channel, and presumably others have as well - it's taken down already. Not all comments are gone, but I guess they'll follow soon.

[@PetervanHofwegen]

love it when ppl get together like this helping out (and have a little fun killing a bot channel)

[@psychosorcerer9438]

Education is amazing. I often listen to your videos as background noise so I can learn random stuff.

[@NoName-ik2du]

I have an address with a half in it. Computers often throw a hissy fit because that involves a slash being in the address. Sometimes I can get around it by putting .5 on the end of my address instead, but some systems hate dots as well. Customer support gets to deal with those ones. I also have two middle names, which also often creates problems for computers. But in those cases, I can just omit my middle names entirely.

[@cheekychappy1234]

Interestingly Google does "get it" up to the 200m zoom level. Below that it falls apart.

[@TrekkerUK]

So who's up for a huge game of Battleships? or... Battleshops?

[@dietmartraumer346]

I used to live in N6, 8. I loved the address but I lost hours to explain it to everybody who needed my address and wasn't from Mannheim: No, that not a typo. Yes, this is really my address. No, it's not a street, it's a block. Yes a letter will arrive there, the German post service knows how to deal with it. This was in the the 90ies. So most of the time I was dealing with humans. When computers got involved it got really annoying: Enter street: N6 Invalid street name. Street is a required field! :-/ Still, I'm proud that I lived at this cool address

[@finwells564]

i have been waiting for this

[@ivandenkov7446]

Openstreetmap have this mapped, but the official site does not render it.

[@DetectivePoofPoof]

openstreetmaps is never wrong! And if it is its because the real world hasn't updated to match it yet.

[@green3487]

That's a lot of Tom Scott's.

[@Repleh]

Silent Venue 4 lmao

[@luelou8464]

Interestingly only some have exclamation marks.

[@detectivechiyo8871]

THATS A LOTTA DAMAGE

[@asd1234asd1234asd]

How else is he pumping out videos like this?

[@blacklightstarcraft]

i am not entirely certain but i think maybe just maybe they are bots i know it is crazy but it just might be true

[@Swimdeep]

I love Mannheim and never had a problem navigating its streets. I lived about an hour away while serving in the USAF and spent lots of weekends discovering new places in Heidelberg as well. Lovely💖 Thanks for the memories.

[@RootedHat]

Neat! Thanks for the informative video Tom!

[@binauralmindmusic-relaxing1509]

I am not surprised: exceptions are the rule in Germany.

[@mikosoft]

Alles ist rule in Germany!

[@HuesingProductions]

Rules rule germany ;D

[@stumbling]

Part of me thinks all these "Tom Scott Official" are actually Tom tinkering around with chatbots and it got a little out of hand.

[@xinkecf35]

Tom, as someone who is currently working on a program that interact with addresses and maps, you now have successfully given me an another thing to worry about.

[@muffinhydra]

In the last hour on my job I have to look through all packages for overnight deliveries that the adress database cannot do anything with. When Mannheim comes up it always brings a smile to my face.

[@melissac3245]

Like U2 said, "Where the streets have no name!"😄😄

[@omma911]

severely underrated comment ;)

[@Janik_701]

Hey could you make a video about Karlsruhe its a very special city because the roads created like a fan shape pls do a video over that. Great video as always keep it up :) PS: You could say something about the "Oststadtkreisel" ;D

[@lcarusfp]

inb4 he already shot footage for such a video

[@_Piers_]

Ooh, I'm glad I saw this comment. Just looked it up on Google maps, it looks great :)

[@Janik_701]

Nice to hear something like that

[@madaadam9383]

Hey a video about my hometown, you just made my day

[@REDmaster1001]

Nice. I live near Mannheim and just arrived at the central station a few days ago. But it seems like I missed you 😁

[@TobiasKremer]

This is nothing. There is a schema here. In Germany we also just give numbers to houses in a village without any kind of obvious order. The worst thing I found in my time working on the last census was a village that went up to over a hundred this way! Other fun fact: People assume that the combination of street, house-number, zip code and city should be unique. It is not everywhere. Would be much to easy otherwise.

[@WithYouIDisagree]

Tobias Kremer do those 'duplicate' addresses have other unique identifiers?

[@jffry102]

In the Netherlands we go as far as making each zipcode and house number pair unique. Saves a lot of trouble.

[@WithYouIDisagree]

jffry102 how does that work, exactly? Are house numbers still sequential along a street?

[@jffry102]

masterofgreen The zipcode consists of 4 digits which mark out a village/neighbourhood depending on population, and 2 letters which mark out a street or part of a street.

[@realhawaii5o]

I'm not sure why you are going back and updating all your thumbnails. It makes them worse. I really liked the red bar on the left or the two red corner triangles for your "Built for Science" or your "Things you might not know"... Your recurring series having a consistent thumbnail made it so aesthetically pleasing and easy to identify. I'm sad you're just doing "haha funni arrow pointy" today.

[@TheSiberianTravelDude]

i cant believe someone cares this much

[@Chrisbrei2502]

I've been watching your videos for some time and never clicked on this one - it didn't seem that interesting. It was just recommended to me again and I just realized, after 4 years, that it was actually about my hometown.... I'm disappointed in myself, but I'm really excited to watch it

[@jufoe]

I love living there. It is so quick to fill out the adress on any form and once you understand the concept it is impossible to get lost.

[@ViolettaSachra]

Just reported that spam/scam account! Scott was right, we germans have no sense of humor (;

[@unknownuser354]

I'm german, didn't know it.

[@adondriel]

Talking about exceptions to the rules, it reminds me of your video on house numbers/postal address. In Costa Rica, there are areas where the houses aren't numbered. The address you send to, is actually just the local post office, and then the name of the person you wanna send it to, and it somehow manages to make it's way to the right house, because of how small the communities are there.

[@yahdi]

Always bring some thing new and interesting. thanks

[@edeggermont]

I hate street names, but I love your channel! Big fan!

[@FarfettilLejl]

That's a strange thing to hate

[@edeggermont]

People who love street names are stranger

[@edeggermont]

OK, you are an exception to the rule then

[@BelialsRevenge]

The C4/zephyr is not multi-lingual, it actually works even better in german, it is literally indistinguishable.

[@trejkaz]

Isn't it still multilingual because it's on the west side?

[@Henrik46]

What does "west side" have to do with anything?

[@serinad9434]

Henrik Vaula Rasmussen The word originated from the name of the (spirit/god of the?) West Wind in Greek.

[@lit2021]

C4 and Zephyr are both pronounced Tze-Fear. That's why it works :D

[@breathLP]

@FrishKino Music Giving pronounciation in one language's orthography doesn't work for another language. One who does not know how to pronounce the english word "fear" would never get what you are trying to say. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is the only way to accurately describe phonetic sounds of a language. Any language learner should be at least somewhat familiar with it. *C4* is usually pronounced [tseːfiər] in German while *zepyhr* would be pronounced [ˈzefəʳ] by an American English speaker. To me, they don't sound very close.

[@inconsolabile]

Monneeem! As a Mannheim resident, this video kinda makes me proud. Tip for anyone planning to visit: It's hard to get lost.

[@ryanellis4474]

This is interesting. Thank you for making such content as this.

[@xWood4000]

Really tiny roads don't usually have names even though they are made of asphalt and are clearly physically marked.

[@dkpsyhog]

xWood4000 you commented before watching the video, didn’t you?

[@xWood4000]

Psychic Hedgehog I watched around 1 minute in.

[@xWood4000]

Psychic Hedgehog And I mean in cities, not only rural areas which are mentioned in the video.

[@handich8580]

xWood4000 well it really depends on where you live. Where I live, even streets, that are only one block long have names.

[@sirBrouwer]

Here in the Netherlands every street has a name. No matter where they are.

[@samramdebest]

Tom can you set up a comment filter? it's getting ridiculous.

[@OrigamiMarie]

samramdebest It would be fun for there to be a custom filter. Posting with a name that's kind of like Tom Scott? Congratulations on the name match, but you're gonna have to prove that you're human.

[@ShaunCheah]

On the one hand, order is appreciated. On the other hand, I do very much enjoy the anything-goes freedom of the KZbin comments section. There is no conclusion.

[@bernddasbanenenbrot4679]

I've been watching your videos for quite a while now. So I didn't expect anything suspicious when I red the title and thought... "Where in Europe could a city have no street names?!" A few seconds later... "Oh Tom Scott was in my Hometown 2 years ago 😱"

[@raquelfernandez5533]

When I read the title I hoped that you would be covering Mannheim!

[@insomniac-afk]

really enjoying all the spam already

[@yannickmartens2041]

You cut me deep, Tom, you cut me real deep with that spur on my people's humour. (Germans do have humour, it's just.... different, I guess. Unconventional. Not British/American)

[@catherineallen6024]

Better. The word you were looking for is "better". (und parteilich bin ick jar nicht!)

[@breathLP]

Well, thank god there are more than two kinds of humour!

[@JAYTEEAU]

Thanks Tom, I love this stuff. Cheers, JAYTEE

[@mjamjom4698]

Great to see my home town mentioned on here! :)