A tale of two (or more) cities 

When I was younger I always questioned why there were so many towns called "ausfahrt" in Germany....

There's a small villages named Berlin a few kilometers from where I was born. Most of the street names are taken from famous streets you'll find in the capital. I live in Berlin (the capital) now and still find it very amusing that the Kurfürstendamm here is a bustling strret full off shops, while the Kurfürstendamm in the village of Berlin consists of one bus stop and a trash can.

If you DO end up in Neustadt though, keep your eyes peeled for witches and/or a talking elephant walking trough town freely

That's why you always check the ZIP code :P

Norddeich (Ostfriesland) is probably far more well-known than Norddeich by Wesselburen because it has a terminal station served by intercity trains from as far away as Leipzig. Freiburg im Breisgau could probably get away with calling itself Freiburg were it not for Freiburg Eidgenosse on the other side of the Alemannic-speaking area. They even both have cathedrals with tall single towers.

In the US like ever city has another one with the same name. Springfield is the most common, with 35 cities called springfield.

It's also very nice when the same town is referred to by two different suffixes. The Deutsche Bahn calls it "Ottersberg (Han)" (short for Hannover). The local traffic association VBN calls it "Ottersberg (bei Bremen)". Plus points for having both options presented to you by either ticket vending machine, but only one of them being accepted.

3:50 there's also 3 former districts of Mainz now belonging to neighbouring Wiesbaden having kept the "Mainz-" prefix which leads to a district in Wiesbaden called "Wiesbaden-Mainz-Kastel" that has a train station only called "Mainz-Kastel" without the "Wiesbaden-" prefix

Just north of Hamburg there exist two villages, about 20 km from each other, both named Tangstedt. At least if you drive to the wrong one of those, it won't take you hours to fix that mistake. Another pair of villages in the same area found a very German solution, though: They are officially named "Wakendorf I" and "Wakendorf II", respectively...

I think it's more likely for Freiburg im Breisgau, that it had to be distinguish from Freiburg im Üechtland - that's Fribourg in Switzerland.

"school children are always up for an adventure" made me laugh 😂

Ich empfehle Postleitzahlen.

FunFact about Norddeich: There's the train station "Norddeich" and the halt "Norddeich Mole", which is also where the railway ends. And they are very close to each other. About 130m between the ends of the platforms, with just a small crossing in between. It's somewhat hilarious. goo.gl/maps/Wuarmc3rAiJ2

Reminds me of a tourist here in Iceland a few years back. He had booked a room at a hotel on Laugavegur, Reykjavík. When he got to the country, he rented a car and asked the gps to take him to Laugarvegur (notice the r!) - which it happely did. Several hours later, he arrived at his "destination" - in the small village of Siglufjörður, some 400 kilometres north of Reykjavík.

I once took a limo from New York City to Farmingdale...well he was supposed to go to Farmingdale, NY, but he went to Farmingdale, NJ.

I work at a pizza-delivery-service in a small town called Leer (Ostfriesland) which is actually relatively close to Norddeich (Norden-Norddeich is also part of Ostfriesland). We once got a call from a customer living in Nordrhein-Westphalen 300 km to our south asking for a delivery, because he thought we were situated in Leer (Horstmar). Still a running gag 6 years later.

Oldenburg in Oldenburg is named that way because it was the capital of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg. The villages of Burhafe and Burhave do cause funny problems too.

The tiny towns and villages of Altenhagen, Alten-Hagen, and Alt-Hagen are all part of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, all within a 75km circle. That really kills your GPS nav-system.

Never underestimate the power of consistency, especially in essential information (like place names). In Italy we have the exact same problem.

There are also Places that have a suffix even though they don't really need one Kempten (Allgäu) is one of those places, a town of 67,000 inhabitants in Bavarian Swabia (and arguably the oldest Town in Germany) the only other Kemptens are "Kempten am Rhein" (1,900 inh.), part of the much larger town of "Bingen am Rhein" (25,000 inh.) in Rhineland-Palatinate (guess where the suffix is from), and Kempten ZH (no. of inh. unkown), a village in the parish of Wetzikon (24,000 inh.) in the Canton of Zürich (where it got the ZH) in Switzerland.

Here in Japan the confusion comes from the use of Kanji, or Chinese Characters. Two words or place names can be pronounced very similarly or exactly the same, even though they're written with different Kanji. If you see them written down they're obviously different, but if you only hear them spoken, or written in English, it's very possible to mix them up. This is mainly a problem for non-Japanese people living or visiting here, but I have seen Japanese people confuse words or places when they only heard them spoken in conversation.

When I was working on the Railway in the buffet car I spoke to a lady who was on the way back from Newcastle. She'd had a very easy journey there and back, trouble was she's been to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The meeting she was supposed to attend was in Newcastle-under-Lyme. To make things worse, Newcastle-uder-Lyme's railway station had closed some 46 years previous, so it wasn't even possible to get there by train, the nearest station being Stoke-on-Trent. Similar problems in the UK.

There's the town of Wernigerode in the Harz mountains in Saxony-Anhalt, and it's a popular tourist spot. There's also the tiny village of Werningerode (notice the extra N) in northern Thuringia, which is in the middle of absolutely nowhere. And ever since GPS reached the consumer market, the tiny village regularly has to deal with busses full of tourists arriving there, driven by bus drivers who can't spell properly.

In Austria, we have Feldkirch, Feldkirchen in Kärnten, Feldkirchen an der Donau. Wiener Neustadt is actually far away from Wien. Zwettl in Niederösterreich, Zwettl an der Rodl. plus the confusingly similar names of Linz, Lienz, Liezen.

Denmark has 3 towns all called Nykøbing (Newmarket/Neumarkt). Neither of them can claim any significant preeminence over the others, so they're all known by their suffix, namely the island they lie on, Falster, Mors, Sjælland. There are other more widespread placenames, especially "Lundby", but all of them save for one, are super tiny, and the largest isn't that big, it's biggest claim to fame is having a railway station and it's own postal code.

Dresden Neustadt = part of Dresden at the other side of the Elbe. Wiener Neustadt = not part of Wien at all, next larger city when you go south.

I would think that's very common everywhere, no? E.g. the equivalent of "Neustadt" in Germany would probably be "Newton" in the UK. (Wikipedia has entries for 38 places in the UK called "Newton".)

For a school trip in the 90s, we (the kids) were waiting in Königstein im Taunus (near Frankfurt am Main), the bus driver was in Königstein in Saxony, 500 km away….

And then there is the possibility of travelling around the world without ever crossing the German Border. America, Egypt, Africa, Brazil, Cuba, California, England, Greenland, Canada, Siberia, Norway, Austria and Turkey are places in Germany. Except for Cuba and England the names are spelled the German way.... Amerika, Ägypten, Afrika, Brasilien, Kalifornien, Kanada, Sibirien, Norwegen, Österreich und Türkei.

Andrew, i wonder why you didn't mention the many towns in Germany that are called "Neukirchen", with or without suffixes. There must be around fifty or so, because somewhen in the middle ages, when a landlord bribed the clergy to keep his underlings at bay, he built a new church and called the place "Newchurch". But then again, where was Shakespeare allegedly born? And the French have even longer place names, I once was in a village that's called Saint Arnoult en Yvelines, And, yes, Anus does exist: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anus,_Yonne

In the rhine main area you can travel from Bischofsheim to Bischofsheim (near Mainz and part of Maintal). And don't forget Rot(h)enburg (Wümme, Ob der Tauber, an der Fulda, Oberlausitz, Saale...) It's like Springfield in the US.

My hometown in a video... (Oldenburg - the bigger one of the two)

Allendorf is also quite confusing sometimes. In THE region around gießen alone there are three.

Just for added fun - for Frankfurt you forgot the huge (sarcasm alert) settlement of "Stadt Frankfurt" in Saxony Anhalt - it consists of like 6 houses, a car junkyard and recycler, a plantation and doesnt even carry a yellow sign on the road, but a green one.

"And where are the horses?" Queen Elisabeth after 4 hours walking tour through Marbach am Neckar, where Schiller is born, getting told, that the horses are at the Haupt- und Landgestüt Marbach on the Swabian Alb 100 km away.

East Berlin, CT, USA next to Berlin, CT, USA and south east of New Britain :-) Neustadt - Often an extension of an old town and first only a district of the old one. Then growing (or divided by "new" border) and then a town itself.

My hometown couldn't be chosen as a location on Facebook because there was another town with the same name but located at a different river. Plus, there's a third town named the same but without any river.

Lutherstadt Wittenberg and Wittenberge are also an example, if you don't know two of those exist relatively close to each other... A friend of mine once rode a train to the wrong destination ;-)

LOL Now I'm really lost! Love your work Mr. Boss!!

Like Neustadt, check the number of places called Newton in England (and Scotland & Wales)

There are 3 towns in Switzerland called Affoltern: Affoltern ZH is located in the city of Zürich, Affoltern am Albis is also in the canton of Zürich but Affoltern im Emmental is in the canton of Bern.

There are 4 villages called Buchs in Switzerland and they are located in the cantons of Zürich, Aargau, St. Gallen and Lucerne.

The fact that Mainz lost part of its suburbs is due to the borders between Allied zones of occupation drawn in 1945, in this case between the French and American zones. While in most places the zonal borders were designed according to pre-existing German administrative boundaries, in a few places the Allies misrespected those and drew their borders according to what they thought was more practical, cutting through pre-existing municipalities or regional entities. In some cases this hasn't been rectified until today and still causes local discontent, such as between Mainz and Wiesbaden. In some other cases it has been corrected after 1990, such as at Amt Neuhaus (Soviet and British zone) and Berlin-Staaken (Soviet zone and British sector of Berlin).

That was funny. You can use the postcode in the navi to find the right Neustadt or Niedernhausen or many other multiple townnames.

On my first visit to Germany I was supposed to go to the town of Munster near Hannover (central Germany), but accidentally went to Münster just above the Ruhr-area. Not quite the same name, but close enough to confuse me.

Back when I was a kid, the series of books used at our (German) school in our English courses featured a ficticious British family, who were hosting a German exchange student named Helga - who was from Neustadt, but sadly the book didn't go into detail which of the 20 towns she was from...

juist means correct in dutch, seems like the busdriver wasnt.

We're not immune in the UK - I had a driver who had to deliver some furniture from Manchester to Bradford in Yorlshire about 30 miles away and a very well known city - he ended up in Bradford on Avon, over 200 miles away !!!! This was before mobile phones so we had no way of contacting him when the customer rang to ask where their delivery was it's called Stupidity in English !

It gets even better when you include smaller villages :)

Many years ago, way before mobile phones, I worked for a trucking company in a town east of Cologne. A driver was supposed to take a load to Mönchengladbach. The boss did not hear from him for hours, when finally he got a phone call: "I'm in München but can't find Gladbach." True story. Another true story in relation to all the Neustadts: After WWII you needed a pass to travel with trucks. One of the zoos tried to get up and running again, and to get supplies and to rescue some animals from other zoos, they needed to travel. A lot. With a truck. So they asked the American authorities for a long-term permit to travel to Neustadt.

Not Germany, but I was once on a coach which took us to Schwarzach im Pongau when we were expected in Schwarzach, Vorarlberg. Distance: ~400 km. Obviously, the error was not correctable in a reasonable amount of time, so we spent a pleasant afternoon hiking the Liechtenstein Gorge instead of the planned cultural program. (And more confusingly, Lichtenstein Gorge, near Schwarzarch im Pongau, is nowhere near the country of Lichtenstein, which is just a short distance from Schwarzach, Vorarlberg.)

In Serbia and its region there are a lot of towns with similar names: Palanka - Turkish for military outpost Kriva, Brza, Smederevka, Bačka. Petrovac - Peter's town Bački, na Mlavi (on river Mlava), na moru (by see) Karlovac (Karl's town) Sremski, Banatski, Hrvatski (in Cro

We have three villages called ,,Altenhagen" in our district. - Hagenburg-Altenhagen - Altenhagen (Auetal) - Altenhagen II (Messenkamp) And there is even a fourth one in the near of Altenhagen II: Altenhagen I because they were both in the former district Springe until its end in 1974. After that, the villages were assigned to different districts: I turned to Region Hannover and the other one was added to Schaumburg. Another example are the villages ,,Rehren". Unofficially, they are distinguished by a suffix which describes the historical district courts they were part of, so they are named ,,Rehren AR (Amtsgericht Rodenberg)" and ,,Rehren AO (Amtsgericht Obernkirchen)".

There are also funny district names like Rostock - Groß Klein (Big Small) or Magdeburg Alte Neustadt (Old Newtown). Do you guys know more?

Its worse in the US, I had my travel agency book a wrong flight ticket once (I should have been suspicious when i had to fly in a turbo prop and the taxi had no idea where my hotel was supposed to be ,) good thing was that delta provided me with a free connecting flight

3:58 Having been born in Mainz and raised in Bischofsheim, I always get a warm feeling reading Mainz in front of the name. "Rechts des Rheins ist auch noch Mainz" :D (Though admittedly running the state boarder along the Rhine looks much neater on a map.)

There are 13! different villages called Wendorf in Mecklenburg Westpomerania. There are no other villages with that name in the rest of germany too. In the county of Rostock, not the city itself are four Wendorfs alone! But all of them are districs of other towns and cities, except one that is for it own and has no suffix. The name means the village of the Wends, the West Slavs. Just for the people to know that this is a slavic place or a german place.

And we also have a Halle in Belgium (and it looks like all of the Halles create some sort of straight line... kinda)

There is a village in Schleswig-Holstein called Berlin.

Freiburg im Breisgau lies not in nor is a part of the Black Forest. It lies between the Black Forest and the Rhine.

Look up all of the "Seedorf" locations!!! It took me a trip into our family Bible, that one of my nieces ended up with, to find that it's the one in Holstein that we're from. Now it's easy for me to remember. It's the one above Lubbock . . . er, Lubeck!

Oh yes, many truck drivers were already desperate who had landed in Kleve in Schleswig Holstein but had to go to Kleve on the Dutch border. Neither Kleve have any suffixes to distinguish them. You need the zip code to be sure not to drive 450km wrong.

Re Neustadt, there are about twenty Newtowns in the UK, too.

There are also still a lot of Reichenbach and we also have a village and not only the town with the name Schwerin

I'm from the same Landkreis as Freiburg/Elbe, whenever I meet someone from Freiburg (and they of course only say Freiburg) I ask them if they are from my area lmao

The village where I live is called Sande. Sande in Friesland, so on the North Sea coast. But there are also Sande in Norway, in Denmark, as a district of the city of Paderborn and other cities ... on the DB website you also had to watch out like crazy until last year, but that is now apparently corrected. Since no one knows the place, I always say to people from outside that I live in the direction of Oldenburg ... Oldenburg in Oldenburg and yes Fehmarn is nice and all, but I do not live in Oldenburg in Holstein and yes, that is a total different direction. Had this debate more than once, surprisingly.

I accidentally drove 300km instead of only 80 to go from Hamburg to Alexanderplatz in Berlin. Stupid satnav dropped me in a huge big place with loads of tourists, and not in a sleepy hamlet in Schleswig-Holstein

That exact same mistake was made by some patrons that stayed at the hotel in Norden that we were staying in. The innkeeper told us that they punched it in the gps system and landed... well, in the "wrong" Norddeich. :D (Postleitzahlen helfen!)

And that's just for important places. I live in a village called Westhausen, and because I value my privacy, I won't tell you which of the 3(?) places just like that I mean.

1:49 and the Swiss city of Freiburg, although that Freiburg goes usualy by it's french name Fribourg

Just recently I noticed that there actually are two villages by the same name in my area, both just a few kilometres from where I live (and from each other). I knew the name, but I wasn't aware there were two of them.

And don‘t forget the famous „Altstadt“ you can find almost everywhere all over Germany. 😉 BTW, there is also Brazil and California in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (I‘m too lazy to look up the English pronunciation 😉)

Thank you! I always wondered, why it is called Oldenburg in Oldenburg. I didn't know that there was a second town called Oldenburg in Schleswig - Holstein, but now I know the answer to my question. :-) By the way: Oldenburg is also the Landkreis. So Oldenburg in Oldenburg also means that it's the town of Oldenburg in the Landkreis of Oldenburg.

i would bet there are even more Neuenkirchen then Neustaadt. :D

I just had the problem with "Glinde"... One is near Bremervörde in Lower Saxony, the other one in Schleswig-Holstein near Hamburg. My navigation system wanted me to bring to the latter but I wanted to the first one. ^^

Just the other day documentary about Freiburg (im Breisgau) featured an aerial shot of Friburg in Switzerland 🤣

Don't forget "Frankfurt an der Hecke" (PLZ 91480)!

Als ich ein Kind war sollte es mal ein Judo-Turnier in Neustadt geben. Ich wohnte damals in einem Vorort von Hannover und meine Eltern wunderten sich etwas, warum es so früh losgehen sollte. Die Mutter, die den Fahrdienst übernommen hatte, war in Holstein aufgewachsen und so fuhren wir an die Ostsee statt die paar Meter nach Neustadt am Rübenberge. Es war ein schöner Sommertag und wir haben den Strand genossen. Einen weiteren Versuch mit einem Judoturnier habe ich dann nicht mehr unternommen.

Fun fact: Most of the Neustadts ("New Town") where founded in the booming 12th century.

We are very orderly people. Except when it comes to anything at all.

Greetings from the Neustadt in Bremen! 😜

It's like looking for the river Avon in England... one of our Stratfords is on one of those Avons.

Oh, and there's also another Freiburg in Switzerland. Luckily, it speaks french, so the residents call it Fribourg.

Whoa... you're not wearing a sweater. Also, my brother went to Neusdadt in the Rhineland... and yeah there are so many.

Those places that belonged to Mainz and now don't any more do so because the allies didn't care about cities on both banks of the river when they drew their dividing line. So, many places were split into two, those on the Oder river are even in two different countries nowadays, one half using its German, the other one its Polish name.

If you ever consider making a video about Berlin please make sure to point out which one you are talking about. Otherwise, some people might think you are referring to the one right south of Weitewelt near the Seedorfer See. The one 20 km west of Neustadt. Come on! You must have heard of Berlin, haven't you? Of course there is a Buchholz nearby. It is in Germany! So sorry for mentioning this too late.

2016 wurden Plakate, welche für Salzwedel Ortsteil Kemnitz (Land Sachsen-Anhalt) (478 Einwohner) bestimmt waren, in Chemnitz (rd. 246.000 Einwohner) (Freistaat Sachsen) aufgehängt. Verursacht durch eine Firma, welche im Auftrage der sachsen-anhaltinischen Landeszentrale für politische Bildung tätig war. :)

Ich saß einmal in meinem Bus, der mich aus Boston in die Mitte von Manhattan bringen sollte. Die Fahrerin fütterte das GPS mit der Adresse und landete im tiefsten Brooklyn. In New York gibt es halt auch Straßennamen gerne mehrfach, vor allem solche wie "23rd Street"...

There's a Bettmar about 20 km down the road of Bettmar.

Since the birth of GPS navigation in cars there have been plenty of people stranding in Norddeich. The hundred residents are more or less used to telling people they are completely wrong. It happens every so often that somebody rings at the door and asks where the ferry goes to Norderney. A former collegue of my father's lives there. So I knew the story and we have no understanding why people plainly follow the instructions of the navigation computer leading them through the Elbtunnel in Hamburg. That should clearly indicate the driver that they are on the wrong way. In our not so densely populated area of Dithmarschen the navigation software often gets a bit confused. It might also rely on the fact that the map data of roads is not updated regularly. In the early days of personal GPS an old tank bridge or armored bridge ("Panzerbrücke") in Delve was still part of the road net even though it was torn down many years before. After the first two cars had to be rescued from the river Eider, they installed large concrete blocks to stop people from heading into the water.

Norddeich Mole heißt die Haltestelle bei der DB, wenn man mit dem Schiff auf die Inseln möchte.

In my weekly train rides, the train always holds at "Warburg (Höxter)", although there is no Warburg that is not near Höxter and at "Bad Driburg (Westfalen)" although there is no Bad Driburg that is not in Westfalen.

On the small Topic of places with "Mainz" as part of their name, without actually being part of Mainz. Mainz-Kastell, is part of Wiesbaden, the Capital of Hessen on the other side of the Rhine

Bei mir in der Gegend wird oft Bischofmais mit Bodenmais (beide Landkreis Regen) verwechselt. Einmal haben die beiden Gemeinden mal für einen Tag den Bürgermeister getauscht. :) In Passau hat man offensichtlich die Angewohnheit verschiedenen an einem Fluss gegenüberliegenden Ortsteilen den selben Namen zu geben. So gibt es zwei verschiedene Schalding; allerdings lagen die beiden Orte bis 1972 nicht einmal im selben Landkreis... Und dann gibt es noch die Verwirrung um Ingling. Das ist eigentlich ein Ortsteil der Gemeinde Schardenberg im angrenzenden Oberösterreich. Das Problem ist nur, dass sich spätestens seit dem Bau der Inn-Staustufe sich der Name Ingling auch auf die deutsche Inn-Seite übertragen hat. Die eigentlichen Ortsbezeichnungen Jesuitenhof, Kellberg und Abraham kennen in Passau die Wenigsten. Ein Bekannter, der in Straubing als Busfahrer gearbeitet hat, hat einmal eine Schulklasse nach Passau-Ingling zu den Waldjugenspielen fahren müssen - und ist prompt auf der falschen Innseite rausgekommen. Was hat der noch Jahre später geflucht, dass er seinen Bus auf dem Fahradweg umdrehen musste. :D

Neustadt an der Aisch...I used to live in Hoechstadt on der Aisch

4:06 Mainz... ist ein schreckiches Loch :D

The worst mistake you can do is probably is to mix up Sydney/Australia and Sydney/Canada.

one little detail/mistak to Freiburg (im Breisgau) there is another Freiburg (im Üechtland) in switzerland and both cities was founded by the same knights so the name is to differ this two cities in the first place.

Very British humor. Great! Ask for /use postal number codes instead!

es gibt noch ein Oldenburg in der Gemeinde Züssow (Mecklemburg-Vorpommern) die haben aber nicht mal 50 Einwohner. Mit diesem Fakt kann man aber noch so manchen Stadt-Oldenburger trotzdem noch sehr gut zum staunen bringen.