If you are from the US you may be used to use cardinzl points. I was often given directions like "the south side of the building" or "go north east" when visiting the US.

This is not common at all in Europe. Sure, we have a general idea of the direction ("it's with of Paris") but we would not use that for anything else. Especially the building case was weird to me, I woukd have said "the side chose to the entrance" rather than "SE"