Faces of addresses

“It used to be orange”

Let me tell you about one of my cab rides in Costa Rica. I was there to visit my host family. I had been down to the river and was going to take a taxi back to the city centre. I called to get a cab but since it was kind of a steep hill down to the river they asked me to go to a more easy-to-reach meeting point, namely: “ “the house on the hill with the door that was once orange”.. I ended up walking around the area and looking for that door for half an hour before the driver actually found me. To this day, I have no idea what colour it might be!

Lost in the neighborhood

We recently got a new colleague working with us. We were excited to invite him to the workshop, and really looking forward to his visit to Stockholm. We had arranged to use a flat at Lilla Essingen and I had been given the key. The number of the street was 37, and with the keys in my hand I looked it up on Google maps. To my surprise it was close down by the water, which did not make sense to me as I knew the location of some of the other doors on that street. I was right. It was not the right place. So I started looking for it, but the location on the map was incorrect and the numbers of the street were not leading there. I was lost! Turns out that number 37, was next to number 51. Streets and number are usually very organized in Sweden, so I could not even have imagined. It took me 20 minutes to find the place, and I was never more than 200 meters away.

New addresses don’t work

We have got a new addressing system in part of the capital Kampala. But people are not really using it yet as the new street names are not uploaded to the online map. A customer can stand next to the street sign and tell me the name and I cannot find it on the map in my taxi app. When I finally find the customer we realise that the street names differ. I hope they will soon upload the new names to the map. That could be useful for us!