Alex Sukholeyster, Vas Mylko
The world is full of strange places. Some are interesting because of their names, others because of locations or shapes. We want to navigate our users to those weird places, in addition to popular sightseeing destinations.
Weird Names
The hill, called Taumata is famous by having longest name on the planet. The full name on the sign is 92–105 symbols, depending on the specific form of it. Broken down by syllable, the full place name is pronounced: Tau-ma-ta-fa-ka-ta-ngi-ha-nga-ko-au-au-o-ta-ma-te-a-tu-ri-pu-ka-ka-pi-ki-mau-nga-ho-ro-nu-ku-po-kai-fe-nu-a-ki-ta-na-ta-hu (40 syllables). Which is translated to “The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the slider, climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one”. Taumata is located near Porangahau, New Zealand.
The small village in Austria, called Fucking, is attracting a lot of attention. Despite original name meaning is “place of Focko’s people”, lots of people take photos near the sign, or even steal the sign. It was even announced that the village would install CCTV cameras in an attempt to deter summertime tourists from filming themselves having sexual intercourse in front of the Fucking signs.
Visiting Hell (which means “overhang” or “cliff cave” in Old Norse language) is possible in Norway. This is probably the coldest hell ever, where freezing winter could go down as much as −25 °C (−13 °F). A smaller building on the railway station has been given the sign Gods-expedition, which is the archaic spelling of the word for “goods handling”.
Weird States
Vatican City it is the smallest state (city-state) in the world by both area and population. However, formally it is not sovereign, with sovereignty being held by the Holy See. The Holy See is the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, and an independent sovereign entity.
The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, or Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), is a sovereign entity, that completely lacks territory, but has two headquarters, within city of Rome (Palazzo Malta and Villa del Priorato di Malta). SMOM has no top level domain, unlike the Vatican City, which uses its own domain .va. SMOM passport is the rarest passport in the world; there were only ~500 of them issued (try to find yourself to whom!). Though the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand do not accept the Order’s passports.
Palestine is recognized by 136 UN members, though the recognition is weird. Clear division between old communist block of developing countries vs. developed countries (e.g. G7). Developed countries (except Sweden) do not recognize Palestine. There are other unrecognized or weirdly recognized entities: Transnistria, Northern Cyprus, DPR & LPR in Ukraine… And there are military occupied territories here and there…
Weird Shapes
There are weird shapes at different scales: city, state, country. Let’s start from the cities. In California, Los Angeles and Beverly Hills are so interlocked, that it’s difficult to separate one from another.
We are so used to the irregular shapes of the countries and states, that pure rectangular shapes are looking a bit weird, in comparison to the majority of the shapes. Wyoming and Colorado are the most non-weird shapes. It’s pure math, Euclidian geometry, pure beauty. But do we perceive them as such?
Weird Borders
In Italy, Vatican City is fully enclosed by the city of Rome. In Africa, Lesotho is fully landlocked by South Africa. But the real weirdness is elsewhere. Let’s take United Arab Emirates (UAE). There is a piece of land inside UAE belonging to Oman. It looks like a true donut. Because inside the donut is a smaller piece of UAE again. Omani territory is called Madha. UAE territory is called Nahwa.
Nahwa, village in Oman with as much as 40 buildings, is a counter-enclave (or second-order enclave) within the Omani territory of Madha, which is itself an exclave of Oman and an enclave within the United Arab Emirates. Visiting Nahwa is usually not a problem for tourists, which are required to pass through police outpost near the borders.
India and Bangladesh brought nested enclaves to the deeper levels than the rabbit hole from Alice in Wonderland. Within the main body of Bangladesh were 102 enclaves of Indian territory, which in turn contained 21 Bangladeshi counter-enclaves, one of which contained an Indian counter-counter-enclave — the world’s only third-order enclave. Within the Indian mainland were 71 Bangladeshi enclaves, containing 3 Indian counter-enclaves.
If you have thought it’s exotic Asia, then let’s go back to Europe — to the Netherlands and Belgium. Baarle-Hertog is a Flemish municipality of Belgium, much of which consists of a number of small Belgian exclaves in the Netherlands. In total it consists of 24 separate parcels of land. There are 20 Belgian exclaves in the Netherlands and 3 other sections on the Dutch-Belgian border. There are also 7 Dutch exclaves within the Belgian exclaves. 6 of these Dutch enclaves are located within the largest Belgian enclave, and a 7 in the second-largest Belgian enclave. An 8th Dutch exclave is located nearby Ginhoven.
Some houses in the town of Baarle-Hertog/Baarle-Nassau are divided between the two countries. At one time, according to Dutch laws restaurants had to close earlier. For some restaurants on the border this simply meant that the customers had to move to a table on the Belgian side.
Weird Mapping
There are over 100 countries, which dispute over 100 territories. There is very cool visualization of disputed territories on Metrocosm. How Google Maps and others show disputed territories? It depends where are you located, by IP network address. In Ukraine you can see Crimea as Ukrainian. In Russia you could see Crimea as Russian. From the USA you could see Crimea separated by dashed line. Google Maps stick to treaty & de facto boundaries.
Weird Navigation
Ingeenee exports to Google Maps [so far in the lab]. You could use Google Maps for turn-by-turn navigation almost anywhere. But not in South Korea. South Korean security restrictions that were put in place after the Korean War limit Google Maps. The export of map data is barred, to prevent it from falling into the hands of North Korea, across the world’s most heavily fortified border. Google and other foreign Internet companies say the rule also prevents them from providing online mapping services, like navigation, that travelers have come to rely on in much of the rest of the world.
Navigation is weird. Imagine, you wanted to travel in Austria, but the navigator guides you through Germany. In Austria, driving from Salzburg to Innsbruck is much easier through a small piece of German territory. Time gain is 70 minutes: 2h 20m vs. 3h 30m.
Driving from Lisbon to Berlin, or from Paris to Rome, will not require to stop on internal borders of Schengen member countries. However, driving from the US to Canada or vice versa requires certain citizenship or visa. Getting from Buffalo to Detroit is possible solely via US or via Canada. Drive time gain is 1h 30 minutes: 4h 20m vs. 5h 50m, if you go via Canada. But visa…
Ingeenee Way
Ingeenee is about better [and best] experiences for travelers within budget and time limits. So we handle such weirdness of geographical features in the way people travel. As virtually nobody could remember long place names, we handle Taumata… and similar with mapping of full names to ‘display names’, or ‘short names’ — synonyms that most people use in communication. For ‘Fucking, Austria’ we use full name, as it is important to highlight the place specific location.
Being in Vatican means you visited Rome, so virtually it belongs to Rome, despite being separate entity. Moreover, most likely tourists will stay in Rome hotel to visit St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican. So we include Vatican sightseeing places to Rome.
Borders are handled in unique way. We identify location context from user query and try to navigate user within that context. E.g. if user wants to travel exclusively through Austria, we will not allow driving via Germany, but this is rather exceptional case. In most general case, user may want to do travel in neighbouring countries or regions (e.g. Bavaria in South Germany, Austria and South Tirol in North Italy).
There is still a lot of ongoing work to organize the world better for traveler. We will organize it for you and ourselves; and it will be optimized by budget and time, simultaneously. Stay tuned for updates.
