Zany! Just zany!

I'm a pretty well-traveled, cosmopolitan person - I have been to a lot of places, some of them not particularly pedestrian-friendly (yeah, Bangkok, I'm lookin' at you) or especially easy to find your way around (take a bow, Istanbul) and I have managed just fine, all by myself.  But the wonders of the street systems in parts of Europe continue to surprise me.  I thought that I had seen every variant of weird numbering when I lived in London, but today was truly excellent.  I had to drop off some government documents on a particular street, so I started walking along when I noticed that it seemed to have the same numbers on either side of the street.  Let me repeat that - the same goddamn numbers on each side of the street.  Huh???  I particularly clued into this when I looked across the road and saw number 47, my destination, and discovered it to be a garage.  Now, this may be hard to believe, but I do occasionally have more brain power than a peanut, and I quickly deduced that the  guy in the greasy coveralls was not the person to see and the garage was not the correct place for me to drop off my documents.  Hmmm...what to do?  Well, I noticed that on my side of the street I was at number 35 and decided, in a fit of optimism, to see if those wacky city planners had another number 47 up their sleeves further along.  And guess what?  They did! And it was an actual government office and everything.  Man, I had heard that French bureaucracy was tough, but no one ever told me they actually hide the offices - jeez!