I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I managed to leave my walking boots on the train at Bad Aussee. There I was, standing on the platform in my socks, watching my only sensible footwear disappear towards Salzburg while a very patient Austrian conductor waved apologetically from the window. My partner just sighed in that particular way they have perfected over fifteen years of putting up with me.

The taxi driver who collected us, a wiry chap called Franz with eyebrows like two caterpillars having an argument, found this absolutely hilarious. "This is why the British have such bad knees," he announced, as if this were established medical fact. He insisted on stopping at his brother's house en route so I could borrow an ancient pair of hiking boots, three sizes too large, that smelled strongly of pipe tobacco and damp sheep. I wore them for three days and developed what I can only describe as a complex relationship with the experience.

The property itself sat perched above Altaussee with that particular stillness you only find in places where the loudest noise is occasionally a cow. But it was the people who made the place. Our first morning, I hobbled down to the village in my comedy boots to find bread, and encountered a woman called Hilda sweeping her doorstep with surgical precision despite there being nothing visible to sweep. She interrogated me about my footwear, my nationality, my marital status, and whether I understood proper cheese. I answered inadequately on all counts. She sent me away with a slab of something called "Steirerkas" and strict instructions to eat it with beer, not wine, because "wine is for people who don't have problems to solve."

The lake became our daily pilgrimage, mostly because of Gunther, a retired miner who had appointed himself unofficial shoreline philosopher. He appeared each afternoon at the same bench, feeding scraps to an ungrateful duck he had named Chancellor. Gunther spoke excellent English learned, he claimed, from watching repeated episodes of Fawlty Towers, which explained his tendency to call everyone either "major" or "saboteur." He told me about the salt mines, about the wartime art hidden in the caves, about his wife's ongoing feud with the woman who won the village baking competition in 1987. "Some people," he said, with the gravity of a man who had considered this deeply, "they never recover from second place."

Evenings brought us to the Gasthof near the water, where the landlord, a enormous bearded figure called Wolfgang, operated a policy of radical honesty about his own cooking. "The pork is good tonight," he would announce. "The dumplings, I would not feed to Chancellor." His wife Maria, perpetually exasperated, would swat him with a tea towel and deliver the dumplings anyway, which were always excellent. They argued about everything: the weather, the tourists, whether I should be allowed more wine given my obvious incompetence with boots. Wolfgang thought my misfortune showed character. Maria thought it showed I needed looking after. They compromised by bringing me extra portions and ignoring my protests.

By the fourth day, my borrowed boots had moulded to my feet through some mysterious process involving sweat and sheep-related chemistry. Franz appeared at the property to reclaim them, pronounced me "almost Austrian now," and presented me with a pair of his own spare boots that actually fitted. "For next time," he said, though I had not mentioned a next time. Hilda began waving when she saw me pass, though she still maintained I held my fork incorrectly. Gunther introduced me to another duck, this one called Minister, and explained the complex hierarchy of waterfowl politics I was now apparently following.

I left Altaussee with sore feet, a newfound tolerance for smoked cheese, and the unsettling realisation that a group of strangers had somehow adopted me in under a week. My own boots, recovered from Salzburg at embarrassing expense, sit in the cupboard untouched. I suspect I will be back, if only because Franz's spare boots need returning, and Hilda never did explain what happened to the woman who won that baking competition.