The Firths do Stralsund.

Mum, Dad and Ian came to visit me in my German home, and experience all the delights Stralsund has to offer.
In my head it went like this:
German person: sfdlkjeajk sdjljklf sdflkjgdjs lsjkfdslkgd lsfdjks lakfjkljlglk?!?!?!!
Family (highly confused): but...whuh?
And then I'd come to the rescue with amazing German skills, and give a word perfect response to the German person, sorting out all the problems and saving the day.

Unfortunately, it didn't quite go like that, Dad's German skills are too good, and Ian remembered a lot of GCSE stuff, and was able to order himself a beer by the end of the weekend. It also didn't really help that whenever I'm put on the spot, and asked 'What does that word mean?' I have a tendency to suddenly forget my command of both German and English, and go 'Urrrm...er....it's kind of ...umm' until the person asking gives up and asks someone else/ looks in a dictionary/ decides to order something off the menu that they can understand. Oh well, I never said I wanted to be an interpreter, and I would like to claim that my understanding of a German word in context is generally better than my ability to explain it in English.

We did all the usual tourist stuff in the area, and I took them on a tour of the bakeries. A trip to Germany wouldn't be complete without that. And, this being a Firth family holiday, I saw a lot more of the morning than I would have done on an ordinary weekend.

They all said they had a nice time, thought I feel maybe I should have warned them a bit more about just how boring German Sundays are- we went to the Ozeaneum (one of Stralsund's two sea life centres) then went for lunch, but then kind of ran out of stuff to do by mid afternoon. I can't help feeling it's a bad sign that we went to the train station as if it was one of the main tourist destinations in Stralsund. I suppose it is a place I spend a lot of time at, so a trip to see what my life is like on my year abroad wouldn't have been complete without it. After that, we had to resort to just sitting around waiting until it was time for the next meal, but at least MTV Germany was doing a count down of 'The Best Music Videos EVER'.

It was nice to have them here, and they seemed to enjoy it. It was mum and Ian's first proper experience of Germany, and hopefully it hasn't put them off ever coming back.

They returned to England after the weekend, leaving me to complete the rest of my year abroad- it's hard to believe that I have less than two months left.