
Estonian Manors - hydrox24
http://www.mois.ee/english/
======
64kbisalluneed
Great 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
> 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
> 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
Yes, 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.

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siilats
My 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 :)

~~~
citrablue
I'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?

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Ftuuky
You 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
What did they do that made them so durable?

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wavefunction
Thanks 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!

~~~
Mirioron
>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.

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mantas
All three Baltic states have manors worth visiting

[http://www.visitbalticmanors.com/en/](http://www.visitbalticmanors.com/en/)

~~~
danielam
I'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.

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dharma1
Good 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
The distribution comes naturally when the majority has to live off the land.

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clon
Well worth a road trip! Best part is that Estonia is surprisingly small :)

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a_e_k
Beautiful, too! I'm here from the U.S. on vacation right now and very much
enjoying my first visit.

~~~
64kbisalluneed
Don’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
use Taxify, local Uber clone or anything else, really. But do not use
YandexTaxi

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cat199
why?

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mb_72
Possibly 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
No, 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
Thanks for the explanation. I have no experience with that company, and am
unlikely to after that information.

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pjmorris
I'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.

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olivermarks
Thank you! Very interesting

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filesystemdude
Can someone explain what's noteworthy here?

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joss82
Many 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

~~~
vanderZwan
> The clickable image map with pixel-perfect precision is a marvel of
> efficiency and have probably necessitated a lot of tedious, manual labor.

I remember reading about image maps back when everyone still thought XHTML was
going to be it, and really _wanting_ to use them because they seemed to be so
underused yet secretly quit powerful. But they're such a pain.

Imagine if someone made an easy GUI tool for that. Just load an image, overlay
some vector shapes, associate shapes with links, spit out either a static
site, or plain HTML tags to embed elsewhere.

EDIT: Via the MDN tutorial on image maps[0], I found this[1]. Interesting to
see old website tech like that.

[0] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Learn/HTML/Howto/Ad...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Learn/HTML/Howto/Add_a_hit_map_on_top_of_an_image)

[1] [http://maschek.hu/imagemap/imgmap/](http://maschek.hu/imagemap/imgmap/)

~~~
Kalium
> Imagine if someone made an easy GUI tool for that. Just load an image,
> overlay some vector shapes, associate shapes with links, spit out either a
> static site, or plain HTML tags to embed elsewhere.

This is an amazing idea! That way, any person with the software could create a
website that would work well. It could obsolesce the notion of hand-crafted
XHTML entirely!

A system where What You See Is What You Get for the web would be incredible.

Is it perhaps possible that not only are you not the first to think of such,
but that such systems have been created and commercialized?

~~~
vanderZwan
I think that amount of snark is a bit uncalled for.

What you're talking about are kitchen-sink tools, and IIRC the produced output
was usually a bloated swamp of tags and classes.

I meant a simple tool that does one thing and one thing only.

Image maps are pretty easy, conceptually. The <map> tag is a list of <areas>,
anchored to an image. An <area> is an <a> tag with "shape" and "coords" added
to it. The former indicating which of the four different shapes of shapes the
area is (circle, rect, poly, and default, which is the whole page minus any
other hotspots that are defined), the latter being a list of nrs.

A GUI app for that would just need:

\- a way to open an image

\- circle, rect and poly drawing primitives to create a new area

\- the ability to select drawn areas and fill in the required href and alt
fields - the ability to change, reorder, copy and delete created areas

That's something _barely_ above the metal of the underlying tags - it wouldn't
add any bloat. It could even be done as a web-app, or a plug-in for your
favourite code editor.

And it's not nearly as elaborate or complicated as the tools you are talking
about.

~~~
Kalium
In that case, I expect to see you posting it in a Show HN in about two weeks!

Conceptually, Dreamweaver is simple. In practice, it was kind of a mess.

