Address Question

[Triple a]

As part of my graduate assistant job I have to make a gazillion databases with a gazillion addresses in the them from all over the world. And I have to break up the addresses into Name of person, Name of company, street address, city, state/province, and postal code. I'm a little confused on the Dutch ones.

For example if the address is:

Postbus 23183
NL-3001 KD Rotterdam

Would the postal code by NL-3001 KD?  I'm confused about the letters. Is KD part of the zip code or a province abbreviation?

Also, would I need the NL, as I assume that stands for Netherlands and only about half the addresses have it.


Thanks

[pinky]

Postbus = a postall bus And not a street but you could consider it as being a street adress. NL= Nederland. I've never seen that on a envelop actually. So you ar right about that part. The Postal code = 3001 KD. And Rotterdam is the city.
So does this help you? Good luck with your job!

[Jovi_Hobbes]

Zip codes in the Netherlands always come in four numbers and two letters. As it is such a small country there is hardly any need to put an abbreviation of the province in the address, unless there are more places with the same name. The abbreviation of the province will then be written after the name of the city. In case of Rotterdam (of which there is only one...) it would be Rotterdam (Zuid-H.) or something like that.

[petra1963]

Zip codes in the Netherlands always come in four numbers and two letters. As it is such a small country there is hardly any need to put an abbreviation of the province in the address, unless there are more places with the same name. The abbreviation of the province will then be written after the name of the city. In case of Rotterdam (of which there is only one...) it would be Rotterdam (Zuid-H.) or something like that.

Which shows that writing the abbreviation of the province is mostly unnecessary and a little bit silly..Because there is only one Rotterdam in our country..
And for the names that happen to be the name of several villages ( by example: the village of Laren in the province Noord Holland or Laren in the province of Gelderland, or the village of Beuningen in Gelderland or Beuningen in the province of Overijssel, or the village of Valkenburg in the province of Limburg or in the province of Zuid Holland) the postal codes wil suffice. If you write a correct postal code.. if not.. then it could be anywhere, favorably black Africa..

[Triple a]

Thank you.


*Now there is just the matter of most of the other European countries. I have to check but I think its germany that has numbers before the city, as opposed to after. I've been putting those numbers in the zip code field because thats what the person who had this job before me did, but I've sometimes wondered if thats correct as doing so means the numbers will be printed after the city name on mailing labels

[petra1963]

In German it's like this:

D- 47533 Kleve, BRD

The 'D' means Deutschland..so it seems unnecessary, as BRD also means Germany. But in post from other countries it doesn't work that way... I do not know why.. 

[Willem]

Country codes are fixed in international postal aggreement.
So BRD is abbreviation of Bundesrepublik Deutschland in general writing... But D is the old type code.  Same as on cars. 
USUALLY, international postal association took the allready existing Car Id Country codes as a base. Only when those were to long, they changed them to shorter.
But NOW, there is a new code system of allways 2 letters... and nobody uses THAT code !!!       
Germany code, new style =  DE
Confusing enough?   

You'll find the complete reference list on:
http://www.upu.int/post_code/en/list_of_sites_by_country.html