Postcodes in Europe?
 

I have just finished making a UK postcode database for all UK postcodes, along with accompanying latitude and longitude. I have converted this to a Garmin POI file and can now search for postcodes on my Garmin 64s and use Open Street Map. It actually works quite well. I followed this guide here:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/...arch_On_Garmin

With this in mind I wondered about making a postcode database for Europe for my Garmin, as I will shortly travel from the UK to Turkey and beyond. But just how useful are postcodes in Europe for navigation? After some research I read that most postcodes in Europe are much more general than in the UK, as they do not map to the street level. Often they just reference towns. Also for other countries it seems that much of the postcode data is not published, unlike the UK.

I just thought that when travelling and looking for small hotels, couchsurfing etc postcodes may be useful, like in the UK. However I now realise that for most countries they may not be much use. Does anyone have any experience of this in Europe? Do commercial navigation devices (Tom Tom etc) come loaded with postcodes for Europe? Has anyone made a country postcode database for their navigation device in Europe?