English summary of the weekend

To our dear foreign friends - find below the summary of the past weekend.

On saturday early morning (8.45 am) we left with 1 Lada (car of big boss), 1 motorcycle (made in china), a KLF (small fire engine with 8 people), two steyrs 590 (fire engine with 3 people), a RTW (ambulance) and our Magirus (fire engine with 8 people and 1450L water tank). Our goal was to support the local professional firefighters on a dangerous road intercept. At the same time we were there for local forest fires - it was a very hot weekend with temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius and strong wind - ideal conditions for the fire to develop and spread ;)

The trip was nice due to the gorgeous landscape and villages. At the toll station we didn't need to pay - the number plate needed to start with EPO (what means "volunteer firefighters"). Soon after we passed we heard over radio that there was an accident so we drove with blue light and the siren. Some km's before we arrived they told us that everything was already cleared so we finally arrived on our camping place (a highway rest stop). The afternoon passed quietly and slowly. We weren't allowed to move too much because that resulted in high sweatening people ;) The food and beverages were sponsored by local government (the snack bar resided 50m away from our camp) because they first promised us a big room to rest and a diner with the mayor but both wasn't possible at the end - greek circumstances ;)

So we prepared for the night and passed it on the roof of our fire engine in the forest - that was an unique experience! In the middle of the night the KLF exited because they got an forest fire alarm. They came back after two hours - the professional firefighters accomplished their task when our team was 10km away from the fire... On noon the next day we got another alarm and this time we went with the KLF and our Magirus. The two TLF's were on patrol somewhere in the hills. The trip to the place where the forest fire was (beside the ESEPA guard in Larisa) took us 45 minutes along the beach, on elevated coast roads, through tourist villages and olive groves up to the mountains.... You can't experience all these emotions we had to workaround without having been there (dirty, stinky, firefighters who stayed for two weeks without a girl and loves the trips with siren & lights...) :D Sadly we just needed to secure the guard and wait for our colleagues to come back after accomplishing their task. Nevertheless this was and will be for a long time our most beloved trip in a fire tank!

Thanks at this time to our driver, Andreas from Germany. He did an excellent job with the Magirus which is not easy to drive at all - he passed us safe through the narrow villages with tourists gaping and needing to contract their stomages at the time we passed due to staying too close...!

In the evening we were invited by Nikos for eating at a Tavern close to the sea and still had some time left to refresh ourselves in the excellent and warm sea *yeaaaah*. It was foreseen that our Master pays the food and we are responsible by ourselves what we drink but at the end and after all the deep emotiones he just payed everything by himself! Thanks Nikos for this evening and everything you did for us up to now!

The rest of the stories e.g. watermelons, waking up with siren, traffic policeman etc. we'll keep under closure until we talk under four eyes only ;)

Have a good day and enjoy the sun!