I have never been a natural at driving on the right. So when my partner suggested we hire a car for our trip to a Mariahof in Styria, Austria, I should have known trouble was brewing. We flew into Graz, collected our sensible Volkswagen, and set off into the rolling green hills with me gripping the steering wheel like it owed me money.

The trouble started proper at a petrol station just outside the city. I pulled up to the pump, got out, and spent a solid five minutes trying to work out why the nozzle would not reach. I had parked on the wrong side. A queue had formed. A man in a very clean Mercedes tapped his horn once, politely but with meaning. I waved apology, performed a seventeen-point turn in a space designed for three, and finally fuelled up. My partner said nothing. She just ate her pretzel with the quiet concentration of someone married to an idiot.

The Mariahof itself sat high above a village called Mariahof, naturally, surrounded by meadows that looked almost aggressively picturesque. These traditional farm estates dot the Styrian countryside, working farms that let out apartments to holidaymakers who want fresh air and the occasional smell of cow. Ours was a converted outbuilding with wooden balconies and flower boxes that someone had clearly tended with actual love.

I nearly ruined this pastoral idiom immediately by reversing into a wooden post. The crunch was minor. The embarrassment was total. A woman in traditional dress emerged from the main house, assessed the situation with a single glance, and said in excellent English, "The post is old. You are not the first." I could have hugged her. Instead I handed over our booking confirmation with the sweaty desperation of a man who needed to be indoors.

The apartment smelled of beeswax and pine, which is exactly what you want from rural Austria and never quite believe you will actually get. The kitchen had a proper wood-burning stove alongside the modern one, and I immediately decided I would master it by week's end. My partner, who knows me, said we would use the electric hob. She was correct.

I unpacked badly, as is my custom. My case exploded across the bedroom floor. Somewhere in the chaos I lost my phone charger, found it in the bread bin three hours later, and have no memory whatsoever of putting it there. Jet lag, probably. Or my brain's standard operating procedure.

That first evening we walked the immediate land, keeping to the farm's own paths. The Mariahof sat among gentle slopes where fruit trees grew in orderly rows. Styria is Austria's orchard, really, and you feel it in every direction. Apples, pears, the occasional plum. We could see the farm's own small vineyard terraced below us, which felt almost greedy in its abundance. The owners waved from their vegetable garden. I waved back with the enthusiasm of someone who had nearly destroyed their property an hour before.

Dinner was simple supplies from a village shop five minutes down the hill. Bread, cheese, some local pumpkin seed oil that the owner had pressed herself and insisted we try. I am not a man who normally gets emotional about salad dressing, but this was different. Nutty, dark, almost smoky. We sat on our balcony as the light went soft and the cow bells started up from the barn below, that rhythmic clanking that becomes oddly musical once your urban ears adjust.

I thought about my driving, my reversed car, my bread bin charger. The small failures of arrival. But sitting there, slightly cold, slightly full, watching mist gather in the valley below, I felt the particular relief of having made it somewhere despite yourself. The post had survived. The car had survived. I had survived, mostly.

The cow bells continued. Somewhere an owl started. My partner poured more wine and said, "Tomorrow you are not driving." I agreed immediately. Some first impressions are humbling, but humbling in the right place is not the worst way to begin.