Here's something I never expected to see...

Here's something I never expected to see ... Muhu Island in Estonia, featured as a tourist destination in the New York Times.  The reasons the writer liked it are completely different than mine, of course (what I liked there most were the birds).  I visited that mansion before it was renovated and turned into a hotel and restaurant.  Mansions like that dot the countryside all over Estonia, perhaps especially on the islands.  They pop up in the most unexpected places.  Even on my last visit (in 2005, I believe), very few of those mansions had been renovated, though some had been purchased with that intent.  Twenty five years of freedom and capitalism have wrought amazing changes on the Estonia that I first knew...