House Numbers

Only the mailman seems to use house numbers to locate me anymore.

This realization was impressed on me the other day when a new address plaque for our house was delivered, a present from my spouse. On it was printed not the street number of our house but its precise Latitude and Longitude. Even those coordinates which I had used in poring over maps in high school geography classes long ago to locate faraway cities had been modified: instead of degrees, minutes and seconds, the Latitude and Longitude were stated in degrees followed by the decimal equivalent of minutes and seconds. Pinpoint accuracy. To check it out I entered those coordinates into Google Earth and there instantly appeared a satellite view of my roof with a pin stuck into it..

I wonder how long it will be before the mail service begins to accept addresses stated in terms of GPS coordinates in addition to traditional street number addresses. Think how fast an electronic sorter would help distribute the mail using that system.

Already “Location Based” services have become universal. Often my iPod Touch will flash a message that a certain site requests that I permit it to use the Location Service of my device when all I wanted was a general weather forecast or the news.

Every item I order on the net is accompanied by a tracking number that enables me to follow precisely and in real time the movement of say, a laptop, from its manufacturer in China, though its transfer to another air freighter in Alaska and on to a truck in California. I have learned the names of forlorn truckstops in small towns somewhere out in the Midwest where my package was transshipped in the middle of the night. When I hear that jumbo air freighter throttling back right over my house at 3:55 am every dawn on its final approach I have a pretty good idea that my package is going to be at my doorstep when I wake up because I had tracked it being onloaded at that forwarder’s hub in Memphis thousands of miles East earlier in the night. And all of those logistics were using GPS coordinates, not street numbers.

All of which has prompted me to think: What if I followed that line of Latitude that runs right through my house all around the world, 16,517 miles, back to my house? (Click on arrow to start movie clip)


My geography lessons always defined Latitude as “an imaginary line” but for me 47°N begins as a very real line, a narrow path up a low berm across the street from my front entrance that disappears into a stand of trees.

I have often thought of travelling around the world and I have even planned such a trip several times using the conventional way of checking airline routes and schedules and fares, flying in a zig zag route from major airport to major airport following the logic of the air travel business.


But now I am going to find out what lies straight ahead over the horizon as I look due West through my front window and follow footpath Latitude 47°N (approx.) beyond those trees.


It’s not going to be a physically or logistically demanding journey.

Except for the first thirty minutes or so as I walk along Latitude 47°N to the water’s edge at Puget Sound I will be doing most of my travel at my computer using Google Earth. Can’t blame me: how would you like to trudge through Mongolia, or vast expanses of Central Russia, which to my surprise I discovered are directly beyond those familiar trees outside my front window, over the horizon, across the Pacific, on the other side of the International Dateline?

Following Latitude 47°N to the water's edge at Puget Sound:

Marktplatz, Coburg

My first view of the Marktplatz of Coburg, an ancient town in Bavaria, Germany, was from somewhere high up in this building, the Rathaus or Townhall.


At the time I was sitting in front of a warm fire here in my home in Seattle with my iPod Touch, having just discovered the wonders of looking at almost anywhere in the world, live, thanks to Livecams, an app with a database of webcams all over the world, and I was looking at the view from one of those cams which looks down on the Marktplatz from high in the Rathaus.


One advantage of watching the world through a webcam is that you can witness the rhythm of the life of a city as it changes from morning through the night, through good weather and bad, from season to season. As a traveller one can usually spend only a few days, a few weeks if one is fortunate enough, in any one place, not long enough for that.

The first time I saw the Marktplatz in Coburg it was nighttime there, eight hours ahead of my Seattle early afternoon. The square was deserted, crisscrossed by the tracks of vehicles in the recently fallen snow.


The next night that same square was alive, brightly illuminated and festive with its Christmas Market.


That scene lasted for some weeks, till one day workers with heavy construction equipment and trucks showed up, dismantling the stalls and taking them into storage for next winter.


Marktplatz reverted to a quiet stately role, the statue of Prince Albert, the consort of Britain’s Queen Victoria at its center. (That match was made here in Coburg and Victoria is said to have declared that she would always consider Coburg her second home. She made several visits here during her reign).

But not for long. One morning I logged on to find the square occupied again with busy stalls and crowds of shoppers milling about them. This had been its traditional role for centuries and the reason for its name Maktplatz. Those stalls would disappear during the night, a cycle, I would soon observe, of a market that takes place every Wednesday.


One weekend recently the square was the venue for an exhibition of classic cars.


Last weekend there was what appeared to be a candlelight vigil, most likely a religious observance.


One evening a large van parked in the square to offload tables and benches. Soon Marktplatz was turned into what must have been a beer garden. You could see smoke rising from the mobile kitchens, enticing, no doubt, with the aroma of bratwurst, urging one to quaff a stein of freshly drawn Bavarian brew! Summer had arrived in Coburg.


At intervals in this constantly changing panorama, a small van or two will park, in the same spot week after week, an awning will be unrolled and an entrepreneur will set up shop for a few hours.

Bustling life is constantly flowing through the Markplatz, but it also ebbs from time to time. Then, the fountains gush but not vigorously, a family strolls through with a toddler breaking from its parent’s hand to run away to the fountain, a mother pushes a stroller, a cyclist rides through, the odd car or truck takes a shortcut, a small knot of tourists clusters around a guide at the base of Albert’s monument. Markplatz, Coburg, may slumber occasionally, but it never sleeps.