I wonder how many of those packages end up in Vada, Italy. Or Cody, Wyoming. Or Buda, Texas...

I imagine the “Poland” part of the address would narrow it down somewhat.

I got curious if I can get data to answer that, and it seems so.

Based on xlsx from [0], we got the following ??d? localities in Poland:

1 x Bądy, 1 x Brda, 5 x Buda, 120 x Budy, 4 x Dudy, 1 x Dydy, 1 x Gady, 1 x Judy, 1 x Kady, 1 x Kadź, 1 x Łada, 1 x Lady, 4 x Lądy, 2 x Łady, 1 x Lęda, 1 x Lody, 4 x Łódź, 1 x Nida, 1 x Reda, 1 x Redy, 1 x Redz, 74 x Ruda, 8 x Rudy, 12 x Sady, 2 x Zady, 2 x Żydy

Certainly quite a lot to search for a lost package.

[0]: https://dane.gov.pl/pl/dataset/188,wykaz-urzedowych-nazw-mie...

Interesting! However, assuming that ASCII characters are always rendered correctly and never as "?", it seems like the only solution for "??d?" would be one of the four Łódźs?

Sounds like someone is getting ready for Advent of Code!

Łódź seems to be the only one translating to ??d?, all others have normal ASCII characters in the places 1, 2 and 4

Experienced postal workers most probably know well that ??d? represents a municipality with three non-ascii characters.

Interestingly, Lady, Łady and Lądy will end up the same after the usual transliteration.

That's (one reason) why postal codes exist. Dunno about Poland, but town names here are not unique to begin with.

So, transliteration to "Lady", "?ady" and "L?dy" respectively seems to work even better in this case than "Lady"

And the postal code.

It goes both ways.

I received a large delivery from Poland recently, and it was addressed to "K?benhavn", with similar mistakes in the street name.

And the packages get there? Don't you put "Łódź (Lodz)" in the city field? Or the postal code takes care of the issue?

Yep, postal code does all the work.

You live in a boat? But how do they know on what sea?

Ironically, there are no big rivers in Łódź (anymore)

anymore??

Sorry, I was thirsty.

There were no "big" rivers, ever. More like springs. We have lots of subterranean water, so out of the 18 rivers we have in the city, 16 have their sources here [0]. They were used to power mills in the 19-20th century during the industrialization. Many of the rivers that used to go through the city center flow underground.

I live close to the river Olechówka [1], which flows into a regulated reservoir that used to feed a mill - so the area is called Młynek, "Little Mill" :)

[0] https://podwodnalodz.blogspot.com/2013/09/o-wodzie-po-ktorej... [1] https://i.imgur.com/SIp8CxN.jpeg