A 14-year-old German girl’s holiday in Malta ostensibly to learn English ended up being a good opportunity to practise Spanish, one of Germany’s largest newspapers Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports.

Writing in the newspaper’s travel section, Jakob Strobel y Serra said that for years he had always travelled overland with his family to holiday in Spain, but this year, to his disappointment, his daughters wanted to do something on their own.

The youngest daughter chose an English-language course in Malta and the bemused father recounts coming to terms with her first independent holiday.

The girl wanted to brush up her English but she found little time for that on the island because the “extracurricular activities” were too overwhelming, her father wrote, tongue-in-cheek. In any case, most of her classmates were German-speaking so there was not much opportunity for English practice.

Despite being 14, the student had no problems getting into ‘every’ club and drinking alcohol

Topping the list of the student’s ‘grievances’ was the fact that she had to get up at eight in the morning for school, which was an ungodly hour, considering she was out until very late at night.

One pool party she attended had lasted eight hours.

Despite her age, the student had no problems getting into “every” club and drinking alcohol.

Buses were a letdown, as was a trip to Comino.

When trying to catch some sleep at the host family where she stayed, she found the bed too short, the breakfast meagre and with just a daily water ration to drink. There were no lunch packs and dinner was invariably pasta with a packet sauce.

The student did make friends with a young man from Bilbao, enabling her to practise her Spanish. This was the game-changer.

On her return back home, her eyes “drooping like guillotines”, she made her parents promise that, next year, they’ll go back to Spain, like they always did before.

“We promised to do that. Hooray! Thank you Malta,” the relieved father wrote.