I got scolded by the lady at the post office. How come I didn’t pick up my mail! Since we do not have street names (we have them, but don’t use them), we don’t really get mail sent to the house either. 
Hamra at dusk; a lone biker in traffic, you don't see those very often
The mail company (LibanPost) does have mailmen, and a couple of years ago they introduced an intricate system of zip codes and mailboxes in building. But the Lebanese proved to be more resistant than that. I don’t know of anyone actually using their zip code (do you know yours?), and have never seen any of the official boxes that they tried to sell us. People figured why change a system that worked fine for them (not)?
So if you want mail in this place, you better have a PO box. You can have your mail from your P.O. box brought to your house at a small fee. In this place everything can be brought to your house. Even Burger King and McDonalds do home delivery. (And valet parking, I kid you not). And so I have a PO box, but the mail company’s hours are similar to mine, so I rarely make it to the post office.
Today I finally made it in time, and had a box overflowing with goodies. And an upset post office employee, who, in her anger, charged me an extra 4,620 LBP for ‘storage charges’. “You’re lucky we didn’t send it back to Holland,” she said. Lucky indeed.
So if you want mail in this place, you better have a PO box. You can have your mail from your P.O. box brought to your house at a small fee. In this place everything can be brought to your house. Even Burger King and McDonalds do home delivery. (And valet parking, I kid you not). And so I have a PO box, but the mail company’s hours are similar to mine, so I rarely make it to the post office.
Today I finally made it in time, and had a box overflowing with goodies. And an upset post office employee, who, in her anger, charged me an extra 4,620 LBP for ‘storage charges’. “You’re lucky we didn’t send it back to Holland,” she said. Lucky indeed.
'Cause look what I got for Christmas; an absolutely hilarious comic book. ‘Burka Babes’. Too bad it is only in Dutch, but the cover can be understood by everyone. (Bedankt Rosa, Susan, Marjolein, Tim en Raffi)
2 comments:
Glad to know you've got a package, because the pepernoten could not have been kept for a Dutch Sinterklaas "afterparty". But the most, you should have missed yours the next days.
Sorry to see that the lady charged you an extra 2.11784 EUR for ‘storage charges’
What did she wear?
Dimphy
I didn't even know there were zip codes... A few years ago, I remember a blue plate with a number was placed on our building. So the next time I sent something to my parents, I put the street number and street name on the package (and did not use the ever-so-common "building name"). The package almost never made it. They almost threw it away until somebody decided to look more into it and figured out where the building was by asking people if they knew where that person lived.
Since then the number has disappeared, so it's back to using the building name...
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