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Olga was a famous doorkeeper at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. Students used to send her postcards from their journeys. It became so popular that
by rax0m 4y ago
Olga was a famous doorkeeper at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.
Students used to send her postcards from their journeys.
It became so popular that it was enough to write "Olga, Sweden" for her to get the letters [0] (source in swedish).
[0]: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Boberg https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Boberg
- pyb 4y agoThere was a time in the 60s when letters to "Daniel, Paris" went to Daniel Filipacchi.
- cauthon 4y agoI wonder if a sufficiently famous, public, and unique name could get delivered. Would a letter simply addressed “Biden” make it to the White House?
- HarHarVeryFunny 4y agoIt works for Santa !
- Symbiote 4y agoI'll bet "Rishi Sunak" would get to 10 Downing Street. Although that's also an address with it's own postcode, so "SW1A 2AA" would also get there.
- dfxm12 4y agoI'll bet "Rishi Sunak" would get to 10 Downing Street. I wonder if random mail sent to top level politicians actually gets to them. The intention is clear, yes, but there's probably layers of security that will prevent it from getting to its intended address...
- dhosek 4y agoFor mail to the U.S. president, it goes to a facility near the White House where it’s screened, sorted, replies are sent (usually selected from a set of pre-generated forms) and (depending on the incumbent) a handful are brought to the president’s personal attention.
- Kon-Peki 4y agoI sent Clinton an invitation to my high school graduation party, and got a letter back that said good luck in college.
- treeman79 4y agoDon’t know about others but Reagan used to respond to a lot of letters people sent. He complained that it usually took months through the bureaucracy. Excellent book has a collection of such letters. “Reagan: A Life In Letters“
- Symbiote 4y agoIf it's a reasonable letter, I doubt the way it's addressed makes any difference. Members of Parliament have a duty to listen and respond to their constituents, which in Sunak's case is the people of Richmond, North Yorkshire. I don't live there, but I have lived in a senior government minister's constituency in the past. I wrote one letter, and I did get a reply — I doubt my letter was directly read by the minister, but it was probably tallied up by an assistant "15 letters supporting this so far, 8 against".
- dfxm12 4y agoI also doubt the way it is addressed makes a difference. I doubt my letter was directly read by the minister, We seem to be in agreement.
- pm215 4y agoThe difficulty these days is the volume. Rory Stewart (an ex-MP) mentioned on his podcast recently that one of his predecessors in his seat in IIRC the 1950s got about 5 letters a week to deal with; when Rory was an MP in the 2010s he was getting over 20,000 emails a year. It's much easier to have a personal touch in correspondence at 5 a week!
- zhte415 4y agoThat's about 55 per day, or a little over 100 per working day. Perhaps too many for a detailed personal response for each, but certainly enough to read. Categorising well for future action, response, ongoing follow-up, a part of a staff member's job.
- pm215 4y agoPerhaps, but how much time do we want MPs to devote to reading correspondence versus all the other aspects of their job, such as holding constituency surgeries, reading up on legislation, doing ministerial jobs (which Stewart was at this time), and so on? Especially when a significant fraction of the incoming emails will be the result of some campaign group or another having encouraged its supporters "write to your MP" with a template letter with set of suggested arguments...
- retrac 4y agoAlmost all paper mail received by politicians in Canada is read by their staffers. You'll get a form reply, at a minimum. Some actually do read a lot of it. Whether curated by staffers, or a random selection, or both. I imagine it depends on the individual politician. Some do reply. R B Bennett, Canadian PM from 1930 - 1935, was an eager correspondent with random people across the country. He read and wrote tens of thousands of letters throughout his career. During the Depression he would include cash from his personal wealth in the envelopes if people described hardships. I wonder if that would be seen as vote-buying today but it was probably genuine charity. I don't believe that basic tendency has really changed. Some politicians do genuinely want to be close to the people and random conversations and letters with ordinary people are one way to do that. And seeming approachable is useful politically, if nothing else. Some want nothing to do with the filthy masses, of course.
- multjoy 4y agoI used to work in the correspondence unit of 10 Downing St. Very few letters made it as far as the PM's desk, but all letters received a response.
- spzb 4y agoI wonder if a letter addressed to “Liz Truss” would have got there in time for her to still be in residence.
- tazjin 4y agoMany buildings in London actually have multiple postcodes. In general UK postcodes are granular enough that almost any combination of a name and code should make it, save for situations like several people with identical names living in flats that are fewer than N floors apart.
- harvey9 4y agoPostcodes are designed to facilitate sorting and last mile delivery so no surprise if large buildings have multiple codes. DVLA in Swansea has several, probably because they get a lot of post in a few distinct categories.
- M2Ys4U 4y agoLikewise "W1A 1AA" would get to the BBC's London Broadcasting House.
- kotaKat 4y agoFun fact: depending on your local postal unit, God/Santa letters can be slung around to local volunteers: https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-does-USPS-do-with-letters-addressed-to-Santa-Claus-or-God https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-does-USPS-do-with-letter... ""Dear God" letters are sent to Mail Recovery offices or local churches."
- m_eiman 4y agoAlso in Sweden, before the invention of postal codes the shortest address was "Bo i Bo". There was a person named Bo living in a village named Bo, and "i" is Swedish for "in".
- sengstrom 4y agoI once received a letter (while at Chalmers) from the US - it was addressed to <my name> S-41296
- gumby 4y agoNot that I send many paper letters any more, but long ago I took to simply writing my return address as my (unique) last name and zip code which has worked a few times (not that I’d know of any failure cases). For US post office boxes you can just write the full 9-digit zip code.
- Tijdreiziger 4y agoKTH's official address is just KTH, 100 44 Stockholm. But since the '10' prefix already implies Stockholm [1], you could feasibly shorten it to just '100 44'. Actually, it looks like Chalmers is the same way - the address in the footer of their website is just "Chalmers University of Technology, 412 96 Gothenburg" (with the '41' prefix already implying Gothenburg). [1] https://www.postnord.se/vara-verktyg/sok-postnummer-och-adress https://www.postnord.se/vara-verktyg/sok-postnummer-och-adre...
- fredley 4y agoLegend has it that when he was director of music at Eton College, a postcard was delivered to Ralph Alwood from China simply addressed: "Ralph, Eton"
- pjsg 4y agoI can recall a letter from Japan being delivered with "Wolfram, Eton, England" on it. So I believe the parent comment!
- dylanpyle 4y agoI spent the first couple years of my life in a small town in Ireland. Small enough that the houses had names, not numbers — my parents were Tolkien fans, and ours became "Lorien". I'm told that letters were addressed simply, "Lorien, [town name]"
- eastbound 4y agoI’d often send postcards to “Grandma, 14130 [Village name]”. Based on my signature, the mailman would know which grandma to distribute it too. That’s what belonging to a land is like. Our kids probably won’t be able to say which country we are from.
- twic 4y agoMy dad's Uncle Bill was a quite well-known rugby player at one time, and received letters addressed just to "Bill $surname, Wales".
- justincormack 4y agoMy uncle got mail to his name, Cambridge. They tried the University, which routed to him.
- FearNotDaniel 4y agoAh Mr Cormack, good to hear you chiming in here... Reminds me of the time I successfully received a letter in Cambridge, addressed with only nine characters: my initials, the initials of my college, plus CB2 was enough to get it there. Oh, and: mokas farakas!
- knodi123 4y agoFor her whole life, my grandma would receive any mail sent to her full name and zip code. Since it was a small town and everyone at the post office knew her. Not as impressive as Olga, of course, but close!
- markmark 4y agoMy wife grew up in a small town. I met her in university and before the summer break I asked for her address to write to her (this was in the 90s and although I had email by then, she didn't). She assured me that her first name and the town was enough, since all the mail for the town went to the shop across the road from her house and everyone knew her.
- kitd 4y agoThe Duke of Wellington's address, Apsley House, was famously: 1, London Funny story: Back in the 1950s, my father went on a rugby tour to the Soviet Union. One of his team mates wrote a postcard back to his mum with an address of: Mrs Williams, Clynderwen "Clynderwen" being the little village he came from. My dad said, "You can't just put that". He, none too bright, said "Why not? There's only one Clynderwen", and posted it. 6 months later, and about 5 1/2 after the end of the tour, it arrived. All over it were notes saying things like "Unknown in Hong Kong. Try Australia".
- fakedang 4y ago> 6 months later, and about 5 1/2 after the end of the tour, it arrived. All over it were notes saying things like "Unknown in Hong Kong. Try Australia". Man, that's some serious organizational ethic! If only both companies and people were as exact today...
- sideshowb 4y agoWe received a letter from a friend in France, in the 2000s, addressed to Wellington but no country specified. Also present were an nz postmark and "try great Britain".
- photojosh 4y agoIs this not basically once-off nerd-sniping for post workers... "ooh: here's a challenge."? I'm sure you only hear about the success stories.
- fakedang 4y agoHaha, I can imagine some post-master and his workers' eyes glinting with excitement once they find a letter of this sort. "Ooooh, unmarked letter... It's showtime!"
- ce4 4y agoIn my case it was an embarrassing success story... my great uncles name was globally, or at least unique in Germany, i misspelled it, got the postcode wrong, forgot street and house number (sent from abroad)... and it arrived a month or so later. Boy got I laughed at. I'd rather wished it had disappeared. Thats was back in the 90's.
- TowerTall 4y agoI am the only person in my country with my fullname. I have a couple of time received letters addressed to "My fullname, country"
- schoen 4y agoI mentioned in the other thread about Costa Rican addresses that I met the Vatican priest/Latin grammarian/Latin magazine editor Cleto Pavanetto (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleto_Pavanetto https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleto_Pavanetto) around 2008 at a spoken Latin event. (Latin was the only language we had in common!) He told me that he could get successfully receive mail addressed to Cletus Vatican I was pretty impressed!