Birthday Trip

As luck would have it, Liam's birthday was also on the same day as the open house for the Tuebingen fire department. Liam is in full on fireman mode at the moment and it seemed too good to be true that we would be able to take him to a real live fire hall.

The place was totally packed. Trucks everywhere, firemen doing things, and many many kids running about having a great time. Liam was a little overwhelmed at first, I don't think he really understood how big fire trucks really are.He was running around like a madman, telling us all the name of every truck and what it was for. Liam has an extensive collection of fire truck books and CDs and basically knew more than the rest of us combined.
They had lots to do for the little kids, even a game where they could shoot a fire hose at a target.
There were also other rescue vehicles there to look at. Liam headed into an ambulance that looked just like his playmobil one. I think he was most impressed that he got to stand inside something that looked just like his toys.
The fire dept had set up some smashed cars to show how all the different tools worked, like the jaws of life and the big car cutting saws and the like. Liam was pretty impressed when the firemen in their uniforms were helping with the car accident.
We also had a look inside the firestation, where Liam was pointing out all the various equipment and telling us what it was for. He was quite obsessed with finding a "breathing mask" which took us a little while to find.

The absolute highlight of the day though was that he got to have a ride in a real fire truck. The big truck would take groups of around 10 kids at a time for a ride. It was a good one too, they were gone for about 15 min and did a round of the whole town. He told me all about the tunnels they drove through and all the things he got to see.
The last thing we did was sit Liam at the wheel of the old time fire truck. This was from so long ago that the truck belonged to the "tuebingen police fire service" Now I forget what year it was, but it was old.
All in all it was about the best birthday trip we could have arranged and it all really popped up by accident.