I have never been so grateful to see a gravel driveway in all my life. After three hours of driving from Vienna, two wrong turns caused by my phone deciding that "Rechnitz" sounded a bit like "Regensburg," and one spectacular argument with a sat nav that I am fairly certain developed sentience purely to spite me, I finally spotted the wooden sign for our holiday let. The trouble was, I spotted it rather too late, braked with theatrical enthusiasm, and promptly sent an open bag of wine gums cartwheeling across the dashboard. They are still there, I suspect. Fossilised into the upholstery.

Burgenland, for the uninitiated, is Austria's easternmost state, all rolling hills and vineyards and a curious sense of having arrived somewhere that has not quite decided whether it is properly Austria or just very committed to the bit. Rechnitz itself sits near the Hungarian border, a town of modest ambition and considerable charm, the sort of place where people nod at you in the street even when they have no earthly idea who you are. I found this out approximately four minutes after stepping out of the car, when a man walking a dachshund gave me a salute of such solemnity that I nearly saluted back.

The property, when I finally located the key safe with the aid of a torch and some creative language, revealed itself to be one of those solid, unhurried Austrian houses that seems to have grown organically from the hillside rather than been built. My first impression, stepping into the kitchen with an armful of luggage and a lapful of wine gum residue, was of overwhelming wood. Wooden beams, wooden floors, wooden furniture that looked as though it had witnessed several generations of family arguments and survived them all with dignified silence. It smelled, gloriously, of beeswax and something faintly herbal, perhaps from the garden that I could just make out in the fading light.

I will confess that my immediate priority was not cultural appreciation. It was finding the loo, which I had been needing since approximately the Hungarian border. I located it eventually, after opening three incorrect doors including a utility cupboard that contained what I can only describe as an industrial quantity of preserves. The bathroom, when found, featured a shower with approximately seventeen settings, none of which I could operate without either scalding myself or producing a trickle suitable for watering delicate plants. I emerged somewhat flushed and significantly more humble than I had entered.

The garden, which I explored once essential business was concluded, sloped gently down toward distant vineyard rows, already turning that particular burnt gold that September brings. A wooden bench sat beneath an apple tree, and I installed myself upon it with a beer from the fridge, feeling rather pleased with my survival instincts. The dachshund man passed again, or perhaps it was a different dachshund man, and I raised my bottle in what I hoped was a gesture of international fellowship. He nodded back, apparently satisfied.

By the time my partner arrived an hour later, having taken a more sensible train, I had managed to flood the kitchen slightly while attempting to fill the coffee machine and had become personally acquainted with every creaking floorboard in the upstairs corridor. I greeted them with the wild-eyed enthusiasm of someone who has been alone in a foreign house just long enough to develop a conspiracy theory about the preserves cupboard. They looked at me, looked at the wine gums, looked at the slightly damp floor, and opened another beer without comment.

That first evening, we walked unsteadily into Rechnitz proper, found a Gasthaus where the menu was indecipherable and the wine was local and excellent, and ate something involving pumpkin and dumplings that I still cannot properly name. I remember thinking, through the haze of travel fatigue and relief, that this was precisely the sort of unglamorous, slightly chaotic arrival that makes a holiday feel properly begun. The sat nav had tried to break me. The shower had briefly conquered me. But Burgenland, patient and solid and faintly amused, had simply waited for me to catch up.