24. August
Yesterday morning we were scheduled to spend three hours with the Feuerwehr (fire department). I suppose we imagined we would just be getting a long tour of their building, but boy were we in for a surprise! The 25 of us who went rode in several fire trucks to a nearby town where we met some more firemen. They had four stations set up for us, and my experience was as follows:
Station 1: Spray the hoses into a target and fill up the hole in the target. They timed us, and we were a lot slower than their usual times. Evidently this is an exercise they do because they were talking about their own best times.
Station 2: Learn about all the tools, hoses, nozzles, etc that are carried in a typical German firetruck.
Station 3: The fireman in the light blue sweatshirt in the picture below showed us how to use these tools, which are so heavy. They can cut into vehicles in a car accident, for example. They could also cut off your fingers. Or your arm.
Station 4: We went up about 30 meters in a crane. Below is a view of our friends down on the ground. Emily was laughing so hard because she was enjoying it so much that the fireman with us took us all the way up, the highest we could go. We could see quite a long ways off!
We didn't realize that our first station was actually a race, and that the winning group (not us!) got to spray everyone else with a water cannon. Everyone got so wet. When a friend of mine turned to run away, he didn't see me behind him and WHAM, our heads slammed together. I have a rattled brain and a nice swollen eye to prove it... It's a good thing to laugh about though. I feel a bit better today.
Bis später,
Abigail
Post a Comment