I wish to confirm the spelling (and thereby the existence) of a street
name in Helsinki, Finland - I have some alternate spellings, based on
a problem with the legibility of the return address on an envelope. I
do not want the letter I mail to go astray, so here are the spellings:
Rakunnandie, or Rakunmandie, or Rakumnandie, or Rakunnantie, or
Rakunmantie, or Rakunnanjie, etc. In doing a search on all of those
variations on Google, I turn up nothing. I can't find Helsinki street
maps online except by ordering through the mails (nothing virtual on
the web), and white pages directories are all in Finnish. Again, all I
need is confirmation of a spelling. The actual address on the envelope
is given
as c/o "person's name", Rakunnandie (?) ISC 44, 00330 Helsinki,
Finland.

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Clarification of Question by aitengri-ga on 08 Jun 2004 23:59 PDT

I have found a city map of Helsinki showing a "Rakuunantie" street,
but with address numbers going only from1 - 19. So, a further
"clarification" would be, is there a valid address "ISC 44" associated
with Rakuunantie? I believe this is the street name i have been
looking for, if no other street beginning with "Raku" and ending with
"n(?)ie" shows up in your search....

Hello Aitengri

I have been puzzling over this all day.  I solved it a couple of hours
ago and have been waiting to get a lock on the question to answer
it...

The address you require is this:

Mr A N Other
Rakuunantie 15 C 44
00330 Helsinki
Finland

The ISC part is what has thrown you I think, it actually should read
15 C.  I discovered this by doing this search on Google:
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Rakuunantie+finland

Notice how all the addresses come up in the format
NUMBER-LETTER-NUMBER.  This must be the case with this address too.

I also can confirm that the street name is Rakuunantie.  You can
access the Finnish postal code checker here:
http://www.posti.fi/postinumeroluettelo/

Typing 00330 confirms all the street names within that area and one is
indeed called Rakuunantie with house numbers from 1 to 18.

I hope this answers your question.  If you have any further queries
regarding this please ask for clarification and I will do all I can to
help.

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Clarification of Answer by palitoy-ga on 09 Jun 2004 11:39 PDT

I forgot to also mention that putting this information into the
Finland Mailing Address checker you get a 100% match.

This mailing address checker can be found here:
http://www.uniserv-online.de/cgi-bin/post/frame.pl?product=post&country=fi&language=e&maske=a&mode=in

Really excellent. Beyond complete :) Took care of all dimensions of
the problem.  I certainly don't disvalue the "find". I'll up my ante
to a round number.

Wonderful deductive work, Palitoy! I love to see someone "thinking outside the box."

I saw this only minutes after it was posted and wanted to help but was
informed by Google that this question was currently being answered and
so no comments were available. Anyway, working in Helsinki, I already
knew where district 33 (as in 00330, known as Tilkka by the locals) is
situated, I grabbed the local phone directory which has detailed city
maps of the area covered by the phone service and found Rakuunantie.
It means Dragoon Road. I also guessed that the IS was a misreading of
15 since the convention in Finland is for the first number to refer to
the house or plot number, the letter marks the entrance and the last
number is the apartment number. Given that there are entrances A and B
also, both containing 14 apartments - 7 in each - one could deduce
that #15 is probably on the ground floor! I'm pleased the Google
answer showed how very efficient the Finnish authorities have been in
providing an address checking system on the Net. When I asked about
whether a similar system existed in the US, my correspondent replied
"No way not never! We have something here called the Billa Rights!" Go
figga.

I've just read the additional comment by stehvelo-ga, and note that he
actually lives and works in Helsinki. I've tried using the search term
"white pages" etc. for looking up a phone number, and apparently the
term "white pages" doesn't carry the same meaning as it does here in
the land of civil anarchies. In any event, would stehvelo-ga be
willing to indicate the best link to a listing of surnames in
theHelsinki phone directory? Finnish is worse than Greek to me, so all
that finno-ugrish stuff leads me over and over to commerical listings,
and I can't seem to second guess where to go... for one little phone
number :)

Sorry to be so tardy - the only website I can find which provides the
info you want is available on Finnish and Swedish and requires
registration by mobile phone so the enquiry can be charged (25
eurocents). So it doesn't seem likely to work if you call from outside
Finland. The url is www.eniro.fi

Thanks, Stehvelo-ga...at least I can stop looking :)