Thursday, March 22, 2007

International shipping school: Estonia

When I was looking at my site statistics today I saw that American visitors were ranked #1, but the interesting thing to me was that Estonia ranked #2. It made me think back to when I was a cadet and we went to Estonia and visited their maritime academy. I was very impressed with it and the cadets there. I would say that they were actually right up there with my school, Maine and the simulator they had at the time was better than ours. I was very impressed by their strong language skills which is something that we tend to lack in the U.S. It is good to know that some of our foreign counterparts are excellent merchant mariners as well, especially when there are so few American ships in the ocean these days.

So for all the Estonian visitors to my site I wanted to say hello and 'Aitah' (I think that is Thank You) for a great stay at your beautiful country and being so welcoming when we visited your maritime school.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Estonia? They have a lot of ships? That is interesting. I will have to look into that.

I have heard it is an excellent place to visit.

DRINA said...

My husband & I just shipped a BMW 740I to Rotterdam from Oakland, California. We choose to use ALLADIN FREIGHT in Oakland who used RONEX in RIDDERKIRK, NETHERLANDS. The transaction seemed SEEMLESS until the car arrived. Ronex indicated that they wanted 1700 Euros to clear customs which is OUTRAGEOUS. The next day said they would not give us the car until we provided a 6000 euro bond. This was very upsetting. I called customs in the Netherlands, Croatia and Italy including the American Embassy and they all said I did not have to pay ANYTHING other than the destination charges and insurance for the time I would be in Europe. As Croatian American's we have many friends and family memebers that shipped vehicles in the passt and they only had to pay 150 euros for documentation and insurance. Croatia allows people from the states to drive under their countries registration with different insurance which is where the final destination was.

RONEX and ALLADIN had intentions of RIPPING US OFF! They ruined the first week of our trip because we were very very upset and nervous because of WHAT COULD HAPPEN! They wanted the bond to be wired to RONEX direct and would not use an escrow service.

When we mentioned that Christine at ALLADIN Freight was to blame, they said, "She is our partner and please don't speak poorly of her!" Really, then who is to blame? We spent hundreds of dollars and about a hundred alone on phone bills. I don't care about that but a WELL DESERVED VACATION WAS RUINED! Please do not use ALLADIN FREIGHT IN OAKLAND AND AVOID RONEX in RIDDERKIRK, ND.

Drina Bracic

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