I have always believed that the true start of any family holiday is not the moment you arrive, but the moment something goes slightly wrong. Ours began somewhere on the A2 motorway south of Vienna, when I confidently announced we were "basically there" while we were still a good hour away. My wife gave me that look. The children, who had been asking "are we nearly there" since Graz, immediately demanded snacks we did not have. I had packed the snacks in the boot, which was now buried under suitcases, a travel cot, and what appeared to be half of Toys R Us. We pulled into a petrol station where I performed an undignified excavation while my youngest announced to a passing Austrian family that "Daddy is lost." I was not lost. I was merely optimistic.

The final stretch into Burgenland proper is rather lovely, or it would have been had I not been navigating by phone while simultaneously refereeing a dispute about whose turn it was on the tablet. The landscape opens up into gentle hills and vineyards, all very pastoral and calming, which made an interesting contrast to the chaos inside our Renault. We passed signs for Eisenstadt and I thought about Haydn for approximately four seconds before someone spilled apple juice on my knee.

Finding the Sudburgenland was straightforward enough, though I managed to miss the turning twice due to a combination of overconfidence and a sat nav that had apparently given up on us. The property sits in a quiet spot near St. Michael im Burgenland, surrounded by the kind of countryside that makes you want to breathe deeply and possibly take up watercolours. It is a traditional Austrian house, solid and welcoming, with a garden that immediately caught the children's attention because it contained a trampoline. I had not noticed the trampoline in the listing. The children had apparently memorised every photograph and were already removing their shoes with the urgency of people who had spotted water in a desert.

My wife went to find the key safe while I attempted to prevent our youngest from executing a backflip he was in no way qualified to perform. The key safe and I had a brief disagreement about which way was up, which I lost. I am forty-three years old and still cannot reliably operate a key safe. There is something humbling about standing in a foreign garden, sweating slightly, while your family watches you fail at a basic mechanical task. I got there eventually, though I suspect the neighbours now think I was attempting to break in.

Stepping inside for the first time, the house had that particular stillness of somewhere waiting to be lived in. The kitchen was large and properly equipped, not one of those holiday kitchens where you discover the only knife is a butter knife and the pans have seen better decades. The living area opened onto a terrace with views across the countryside, all very pleasant and civilised. Upstairs, the bedrooms were simple and clean, and I immediately claimed the one with the better view on the grounds that I had done the driving. My wife pointed out that she had done the navigating, the snack distribution, and the peacekeeping. I conceded the point gracefully and took the other room.

By evening, we had established our base camp. The children had claimed the trampoline, the terrace, and various strategic positions around the house. I had claimed a beer from the local supermarket run, which I drank on the terrace while watching the sun drop behind the hills. The mishaps of the journey already felt like part of the story rather than the whole of it. That is the thing about family holidays, I suppose. The chaos is not separate from the relaxation; it is the price of entry, and usually worth paying.