Ammerbuch Fire dept day

The village I live in is called Entringen, which is a pretty small place of around 4000 people.  As is the case for many small places, we are grouped together with a few other villages to be considered one larger town for many municipal services and functions.  There are five villages that are grouped together to make up Ammerbuch, and we share things like a mayor, Police, and of course, Fire Dept.

The Ammerbuch FD purchased an exciting new fire truck this year and it was time for the annual open house and festival to show it off.

Germans are mad on “fests” and there seems to be one going on every week from April-October.  There is always a superficial reason, like a fire/police/hospital hosting, or maybe some cultural club of some kind like a brass band, but all the fests seem to have the same basic elements:

1. Booths with sausages and snacks
2. Beer

Basically, they serve as a nice reason to get a whole bunch of people out of the house and in a common place to hang out with snacks.  Generally a good thing.  Our Ammerbuch fest was typical, a big food and beer area, then booths around the outside from the fire dept, red cross etc describing themselves and their role in the community.

Since Liam is still a big Fire Truck fan, we had to go and check it out.  We looked at the schedule and planned our arrival to watch the mock-accident.  I correctly assumed Liam would enjoy watching smashed up cars get cut apart by firemen.

There was quite a large crowd there by the time we arrived, so Liam got some help from his giant Uncle Bernhard to see over the heads of everyone.

As interesting as the whole accident was, the highlight for all the little people was that all the trucks were parked and open for them to run in and out of as they pleased.  Liam liked the new fire truck best of all since it was the biggest.

The glare off the windshield makes it a little hard to see him in there, so I went around the side for a better shot on the next fire truck he climbed in.

All in all a nice way to enjoy an afternoon.  I did wonder a couple of times what would happen if there was a fire someplace during this fest.  All the firemen, ambulance workers and their equipment was pretty tied up in the crowd.