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Estonian Manors
- clon 8y agoWell worth a road trip! Best part is that Estonia is surprisingly small :)
- a_e_k 8y agoBeautiful, too! I'm here from the U.S. on vacation right now and very much enjoying my first visit.
- PrimeDirective 8y agoCool, whole country or some place particular?
- 64kbisalluneed 8y agoDon’t miss the museums in Tallinn and the old town. Taxi is cheap if called by phone. Don’t pick one up on the street, more expensive.
- PrimeDirective 8y agouse Taxify, local Uber clone or anything else, really. But do not use YandexTaxi
- cat199 8y agowhy?
- mb_72 8y agoPossibly anti-Russian bias? It's common here. That said, Taxify is pretty good and cheap, and personally I don't bother with anything else. I live and work in Tallinn as a remote worker for a few clients; internet is cheap and fast. I've half-Australian / half-Estonian, and have Estonian citizenship so I'm not really familiar with the e-Residency program except to the extent that it's clear the government is investing a lot into it.
- PrimeDirective 8y agoNo, has nothing to do with Russian bias. Their maps use incorrect names. Their app also requires you to pinpoint the exact location to where you are going, as in type it in and you will get a certain price no matter how long the fare takes. Which is great if you have 0 concerns about your privacy. Not very flexible in that regard
- mb_72 8y agoThanks for the explanation. I have no experience with that company, and am unlikely to after that information.
- 8y ago
- ulzeraj 8y agoWent to Tallinn earlier this year. Old Town Tallinn was beautifully covered in snow. Way more charming than its sister Helsinki. Left by train to St. Petersburg by Narva.
- filesystemdude 8y agoCan someone explain what's noteworthy here?
- stephengillie 8y agoThis is more of a "shut off your brain and enjoy history" kind of thread. I like to use the "hide" button so the thread doesn't distract me again.
- joss82 8y agoMany things actually: - The clickable image map with pixel-perfect precision is a marvel of efficiency and have probably necessitated a lot of tedious, manual labor. Or a nice dive into a library of country maps and a script to tie it all together. - Most of the content is static HTML, probably updated by hand from time to time. Could this be the reason why the website is surviving the slashdot/HN effect? - It seems that there are a lot of Estonians (or Estoniaphiles) on Hacker News
- iiv 8y ago>Most of the content is static HTML, probably updated by hand from time to time. Could this be the reason why the website is surviving the slashdot/HN effect? Probably not, because it doesn't survive the slashdot effect. Many of the places I clicked didn't work.
- joss82 8y agoIndeed I'm getting quite a few 404s now. Oh well.
- NullPrefix 8y agoActually Slashdot effect is 5xx, not 404.
- bkirkby 8y ago
- 64kbisalluneed 8y agoGreat work! I’m Swedish and went to Estonia for a wedding a couple of years ago. I was surprised how well connected the country was to the internet. While surfing Swedish sites in Tallinn it felt like I was surfing from my home in Stockholm. They are really taking internet very serious and taking the lead in many related areas.
- hydrox24 8y ago> They are really taking internet very serious and taking the lead in many related areas. Indeed they are. I stumbled across this link because I'm travelling to Estonia in a few months (found from Wikipedia's image of the day, which was this[0]). But I am aware of their e-residency program [1], which is quite an interesting innovation. It's part of a larger effort [2] as well, turns out. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taagepera_Church https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taagepera_Church [1]: https://e-resident.gov.ee/ https://e-resident.gov.ee/ [2]: https://e-estonia.com/ https://e-estonia.com/
- 64kbisalluneed 8y ago> But I am aware of their e-residency program This is really a very cool thing! It gives you possibility to open bank accounts, start companies and do business with Estonia in a better way without even being there, if I’m not wrong.
- xevb3k 8y agoYes, it’s getting better and better I think. You couldn’t set up a bank account remotely for a long time. But you can now setup a Holvi account online and it’s really easy, doesn’t even require a Skype call. There are still some niggles, if you need insurance for example (professional indemnity) it doesn’t seem easily available. But I’m hoping more services will become available, and things will get easier.
- Mirioron 8y ago>While surfing Swedish sites in Tallinn it felt like I was surfing from my home in Stockholm. You might've been on the same network. Telia is one of the largest (the largest?) ISPs in Estonia.
- mantas 8y agoAll three Baltic states have manors worth visiting http://www.visitbalticmanors.com/en/ http://www.visitbalticmanors.com/en/
- danielam 8y agoI'd add Polish manors (the dwór or dworek) to the list. Manors of a wide ranging breadth, spanning centuries and architectural styles, from quaint country estates to stately palaces.
- wavefunction 8y agoThanks for this post, I've been considering visiting Estonia and Latvia and Lithuania for a while and this provides some cultural context. The effort this gentleman has put into cataloging and photographing his nation's heritage is something to be applauded!
- ljm 8y agoI’ve lived in Latvia for some time and spent a fair while in Lithuania. They’re incredibly beautiful countries and at least for me felt more like home than anywhere else. There’s a tranquility you don’t tend to see further West. I highly recommend paying the Baltic countries a visit and I’d be happy to share more as an ex-pat who moved there.
- Mirioron 8y ago>The effort this gentleman has put into cataloging and photographing his nation's heritage is something to be applauded! Ironically the manors were largely owned by Germanic people who were not Estonian. They are the local (Germanic) nobles after the crusades to the Baltic region. Estonians were called "people of the land" (maarahvas) and their language "language of the land" (maakeel) because they had been in some form of indentured servitude ever since the crusades. The word for German/Germany/Germanic in Estonian is "saks," which implies/means nobility. It as used to refer to the Lords of the manor. I mention this, because if you think about it then its basically the cultural heritage that accompanied something that was brutal for Estonians. Indentured servitude isn't far from slavery after all. On the other hand, the Soviet era wiped most of that away, so people are neutral about the whole Germanic nobles thing.
- dharma1 8y agoGood stuff. Was just looking at a refurb project in Estonia and saw some of these already :) Such a rich history. Also, really brings home the point how geographically distributed population used to be in terms of countryside vs city, compared to now when large part of the population lives in Tallinn.
- digi_owl 8y agoThe distribution comes naturally when the majority has to live off the land.
- lopmotr 8y ago"Rich history" seems like a strangely positive term for feudalism which was not too different from the American black slavery and existed up until about the same time. They might be nice buildings, but were used for horrible purposes.
- pjmorris 8y agoI'm half Estonian. My mother and her parents emigrated to the US shortly after WW2, after spending some time as refugees. They've often spoken of one of the manors on the site, it was gratifying to see it there.
- olivermarks 8y agoThank you! Very interesting
- siilats 8y agoMy parents own this one if anyone wants to ask questions about them http://www.mois.ee/english/harju/kernu.shtml http://www.mois.ee/english/harju/kernu.shtml Surprising to find this page on hn :)
- richjdsmith 8y agoAny idea what the cost to heat it is annually? Did they buy it or is it an old family home?
- citrablue 8y agoI'd love to know more about the costs involved. As the sibling noted, annual recurring costs are interesting, but also super curious about the property values. Is it relatively easy for a foreigner to purchase one?
- hydrox24 8y agoI would love to know what the legal situation is like in Estonia—are they required to maintain it to a certain level or keep it in it's original condition? Also, I'm visiting really soon and I would love to see the inside of one of these manors. Would they take visitors?
- Ftuuky 8y agoYou have something similar, albeit not as cool, for Portuguese manors (we called them solares) [0]. My father restores these old houses, it's very interesting to see how well they were built, literally designed to withstand for centuries with minimal maintenance. [0] http://www.solaresdeportugal.pt/EN/casas_antigas.php http://www.solaresdeportugal.pt/EN/casas_antigas.php
- stefkors 8y agoWhat did they do that made them so durable?